Noma’s pop-up restaurant in Australia has sold out all its tables in less than two minutes according to Noma chef René Redzepi and Nick Kokonas, founder of Tock, a new ticketing system for restaurants.
Redzepi said that it was a new record for Noma as they sold out in Australia in under two minutes with over 84,000 page views per minute.
Noma is opening a pop-up restaurant in Australia for 10 weeks next year. It will be offering a menu of Australian produce. What is innovative is that the cost of the menu was required to be paid in full at the time of booking.
Kokonas who is co-owner of Alinea, Next and Aviary together with one of the world’s best chefs Grant Achatz said that the tables had been booked within a minute and the system had processed over $1M in 2 minutes for the US pop-up restaurant.”
The system has already been tested by Alinea and Next. Kokonas said on Twitter that “Many restaurants will look at the Noma sale and say “but we are not Noma”. But Noma shows what is possible on Tock.”
Tock is a comprehensive toolbox that is built to fundamentally change the way restaurants create and manage bookings. It enables restaurants to create booking templates, manage tables and review analytics which are all exportable to marketing, accounting and CRM services.
Kokonas said on a blog post earlier this year that: “People buy tickets to every form of entertainment from theater to sports. And there are a myriad of tickets that can accommodate various restaurant situations from private events to à la carte casual dining. We understand the mindset-shift that needs to take place in order to change business practices in any field let alone one so rooted in tradition as the restaurant industry. So we had to make Tock simple enough to use that the technology — and the friction — almost disappears.
He said Tock is organized by experiences not reservations. Restaurants can create experiences easily and offer them to guests based on times, locations such as ‘the bar’ or ‘private dining room’, chef’s tastings, or special events. All of these can coexist seamlessly with ordinary, zero-cost reservations.
Is this the future for restaurants? Judging by the success of Noma, it may very well be the start of massive disruption in the way we book our restaurant experience.
Leave a Reply