OpenTable’s Success, and Fees, Rankle Restaurants - NYTimes.com

Not so open; see the article for tasteful alternatives

OpenTable costs a restaurant about $650 on average to get set up. A client restaurant then pays an average of $270 a month for the terminals and table-management software.

What perhaps most rankles restaurateurs is the reservation fee: $1 per patron. All in, OpenTable receives an average of $635 a month from each of its client restaurants, the company says.

OpenTable is in about one-third of restaurants in the United States that accept reservations. When I spoke with Mr. Pastore last month, he said he was concerned that OpenTable was “becoming a Ticketmaster, a tollbooth to the nation’s restaurant tables.”

OpenTable’s Success, and Fees, Rankle Restaurants - NYTimes.com