Latest news with #Tock
Eater
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
A Filipino and Japanese Restaurant Mainstay Lives Once Again
is the associate editor for the Northern California and Pacific Northwest region writing about restaurant and bar trends, coffee and cafes, and pop-ups. This is a list of the Bay Area's most notable restaurant and bar openings, with new updates published once a week. Did we miss something great? Please, drop us a line. August 7 TENDERLOIN — Japanese and Filipino restaurant Ox & Tiger is back. At first, the buzzy Jones Street restaurant will offer three-course prix fixe menus on Sundays and Mondays with reservations available on Tock. In an Instagram post, owners EJ Macayan and Hitomi Wada write they took time off to welcome their child Mamushi. Macayan cut his teeth at Rich Table prior to his pop-up gone restaurant. HAYES VALLEY — Happy Crane lives in the former Monsieur Benjamin as of Friday, August 8, marking one of the city's most-hyped debuts. The upscale Gough Street restaurant aims to be a destination for fine dining Chinese-style dishes. Self-trained chef James Yeun Leong Parry made sure to include a spruced-up riff on sesame balls, too, made to look like a Ferrero Rocher. MISSION — After 17 years, Adriano Paganini's Beretta on Valencia Street got a fresh look and reopening on Sunday, August 3. There's a new Italian retro-modern look and a suite of stuzzichini and antipasti from longtime chef Fredy Lopez. NOE VALLEY — Ingredients opened quietly on Noe Street during the last week of July. The restaurant comes from chef Shuk Dev Tamang who cut his teeth at the Expansion Culinary Institute in Kathmandu. Head here for a variety of dishes including half-roasted chicken and Australian-inspired racks of lamb. OAKLAND — The Temescal District plays host to the second location of Korean restaurant Mugunghwa. It opened in late June, per the Mercury News, and is a minimal aesthetic hotspot for grilled meats and fried rice. SAN RAFAEL — Chef Jun Takeda's Japanese restaurant MaruJun opened with Kyushu home-style dishes and Edo-mae sushi techniques, per an email release from the business. The restaurant quietly opened in early April 2025. CAMPBELL — Bay Area Detroit-style pizza parlor boomtown business Square Pie Guys has gone south. Tuesday, August 5 marked opening day for the business's first South Bay outpost. This marks the fourth location and this one comes with a SPG soda fountain! There'll be burgers, too, a throwback for longtime fans. YOUNTVILLE — Chef Rebecca Weitzman's Clementine opens on Thursday, August 14 with a big ol' summer-friendly patio. The main attraction though are fruity margaritas and dishes straight off the wood-fired grill. Eater SF All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Yahoo
07-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AmEx Gets a Taste of Toast: And a Bigger Bite of Hospitality?
American Express Company AXP has formed a multi-year strategic partnership with Toast, Inc. TOST, a restaurant technology platform, to elevate hospitality experiences. As part of this move, AmEx is integrating guest data from its restaurant reservation platforms, Resy and Tock, into Toast's hardware and software systems. This means servers using Toast Go handhelds or POS terminals will now be able to access real-time guest preferences, enabling more personalized service. In addition, Resy and Tock listings will become visible on Toast's platforms, like Local by Toast and Toast Tables. This partnership is important because it strengthens AmEx's position in the restaurant and hospitality ecosystem. By merging its dining network with Toast's operational tools, AXP creates a more seamless guest experience while expanding its influence over the customer journey, from reservation to payment. It also helps differentiate AXP from competitors by linking card membership to exclusive, data-enhanced hospitality services. Financially, AmEx stands to benefit through increased cardmember engagement and spending. More personalized experiences can drive higher loyalty and usage of AmEx cards at participating venues. Restaurants using Toast may prefer AmEx partnerships due to the enhanced marketing, visibility and data access, potentially improving retention and attracting more restaurants to its platform. Overall, the collaboration positions AXP to deepen customer relationships and expand merchant acceptance, while Toast gains access to new traffic sources and tools to boost hospitality outcomes. Moves like this signal AmEx's growing focus on tech-savvy Millennials and Gen-Z consumers, who tend to spend more than their older counterparts. AmEx's Full-Course Advantage Over Visa & Mastercard AmEx sets itself apart from peers like Visa Inc. V and Mastercard Incorporated MA by integrating deeply into the hospitality journey, not just at payment, but from reservation to service. Through partnerships and acquisitions, AXP offers personalized dining experiences, like servers accessing guest preferences in real time. This end-to-end control allows AmEx to create value beyond transactions, reinforcing its premium image. Visa and Mastercard, as payments-focused networks, lack similar consumer-facing platforms. By owning key touchpoints and enhancing loyalty through exclusive services, AXP positions itself as more than a payment processor; it's a hospitality partner, offering benefits that peers cannot easily replicate. AmEx'sPrice Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of AXP have declined 0.5% in the year-to-date period against the industry's growth of 2.3%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, AmEx trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 17.87X, down from the industry average of 20.89. AXP carries a Value Score of B. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AmEx's 2025 earnings is pegged at $15.26 per share, implying a 14.3% jump from the year-ago period. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Mastercard Incorporated (MA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Visa Inc. (V) : Free Stock Analysis Report American Express Company (AXP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Toast, Inc. (TOST) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Finextra
05-08-2025
- Business
- Finextra
AmEx forms partnership with restaurant POS firm Toast
American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Toast (NYSE: TOST) today announced a strategic, multi-year partnership, focused on powering more personalized hospitality experiences across the vast network of Resy, Tock, and Toast restaurant locations in the United States to create better dining experiences that drive more guests to restaurants. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The companies plan to build tools for restaurants to create more seamless and personalized hospitality experiences combining the power of Resy and Tock's guestbook capabilities and Toast's Digital Chits technology, which allows restaurant staff to easily view important customer information directly on Toast Go ® handhelds and POS terminals during service. In addition, both companies will explore opportunities to leverage Toast capabilities to offer differentiated benefits that enhance the guest and American Express® Card Member experience. This partnership also intends to give restaurants, wineries, cafes, and bars greater visibility by making their listings from Resy and Tock available on the Local by Toast app, alongside those using Toast Tables. The partnership builds on American Express' significant investments in dining to better serve restaurants, diners, and American Express Card Members and merchants. In 2024, American Express acquired dining technology platform Rooam to enable integrations with leading technology platforms, like Toast. The company also acquired reservation platform Tock, adding 7,000 new restaurants and other venues to the American Express Global Dining network, in addition to the 20,000 restaurants and venues available on Resy. Resy and Tock have continued to invest in innovation with the launches of the Resy Android app, Resy's Discover Tab, Notify Enhancements, and Guest Lifetime Value in the last year to help drive increased demand for restaurants. For over a decade, Toast has been the trusted partner for restaurants committed to excellence, striving to make every restaurant more successful and delivering intuitive, powerful solutions that truly make a difference. Recent Toast innovations underscore its commitment to empowering restaurants and superpowering hospitality. New features such as Digital Chits, Menu Upsells*, and Advertising* powered by ToastIQ, Toast's intelligence engine, provide restaurateurs with deeper insights into their operations, helping them make data-driven decisions to optimize efficiency and drive growth. 'Restaurants today deliver exceptional experiences with leaner teams and tighter margins, making intelligent, connected tools more essential than ever,' said Pablo Rivero, SVP, American Express Global Dining and CEO, Resy and Tock. 'American Express and Toast together can help our partners deliver smarter service and more meaningful connections with their guests to drive both loyalty and growth.' "At Toast, we are dedicated to helping the restaurant community thrive. By bringing together two leading companies around a shared vision for enhancing the dining experience, this partnership lays the foundation for finding more ways for restaurants to better serve guests," said Aman Narang, CEO and Co-Founder at Toast. "Through this collaboration, Toast will look to provide our expansive network and innovative technology, empowering restaurants to reach diners and drive guest demand. Working together, we look forward to unlocking added visibility for restaurants and enabling more personalized service, leading to more memorable-–and repeat—visits.' 'Our Card Members spent over $87 billion on dining in the U.S. alone in 2024. This partnership is a natural evolution of our investment in this growing category,' said Alex Drummond, EVP and GM, American Express Membership Portfolio Services. 'As an industry-leading restaurant technology platform, we believe that Toast will seamlessly complement American Express' premium dining experiences and world class dining network to help usher in a new era of dining.' Product features are anticipated to start rolling out in 2026, with both companies looking to explore technology that will power richer, more personalized hospitality for guests and Card Members, and help restaurants fill their dining rooms with high-value diners. *Indicates early release features. To try them, customers can go to the Toast Test Kitchen on Toast Shop. The use of the term 'partner' or 'partnering' in this release does not mean or imply a formal legal partnership and is not meant in any way to alter the terms of the relationship between American Express and Toast or their relationships with any third parties.
Forbes
15-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Tock Looks Back On And Celebrates 10 Years As An Industry Disruptor
Tock, a restaurant booking platform that pioneered prepaid dining reservations, is celebrating its tenth year in 2025. The tool aims to decrease reservation abandonment, contributing to potential cost savings. Its introduction a decade ago disrupted the restaurant industry and marked a shift in reservation management. Tock's origin story starts with a frustrated restaurant owner. Nick Kokonas, the co-founder of three-Michelin-starred Alinea in Chicago, was facing challenges. Even as one of the most sought-after fine dining destinations in the country, Alinea continued to experience hurdles like last-minute cancellations and no-shows. Dr. Larry Yu, a professor of hospitality management at The George Washington University, has commented that 'the general understanding in the U.S. restaurant industry is that about one out of five customers often do not show up for restaurant reservations. Effectively a 20% no-show rate across restaurants, pubs, and bars in the U.S.' This reservation absenteeism had a major impact at Alinea, where the tasting menu dinner can cost upwards of $300 a head. Kokonas realized that other big ticket experiences—like concerts, hotels and flying—all had systems in place to deter last-minute cancellations and no-shows. So, he set out to bring the same level of accountability to the restaurant industry. Kokonas created an in-house system that required people who wanted to reserve a table at Alinea prepay for their meal. This approach provided greater consistency in managing inventory, staffing and revenue. The restaurant's no-show rate was basically eliminated. This success soon attracted interest from other restaurateurs and in 2014, Kokonas transformed the platform into an independent company, Tock. Tock data suggests that requiring some form of upfront commitment—whether a deposit, credit card hold, or full prepayment—can significantly reduce no-shows. Even a small deposit at the time of booking tends to lower absenteeism, with fully prepaid reservations showing the most dramatic impact. 'We saw an opportunity to completely rethink reservations,' Matt Tucker, head of Tock, said in an email. "At Alinea, a no-show wasn't just inconvenient. It was costly. Instead of continuing with the status quo, we introduced our own product, Tock, and prepaid bookings to the industry. Tock gave restaurants financial certainty, reduced friction for the guests and the restaurant, and allowed us to treat reservations more like ticketing for an experience.' The prepaid reservation system began with Alinea, and eventually evolved. Tock has now been adopted by more than just restaurants—wineries, pop-ups and experience-driven businesses are using the system to gain stronger guest commitment. According to Tock, there are now over 7,000 businesses that use and benefit from the system. When reflecting on some of the first restaurants to use Tock, Tucker says they all had something in common, they were "innovators who wanted to challenge the norms." "Whether it was OTOKO in Austin rethinking omakase, or Cow by Bear throwing anonymous dinner parties in San Diego, these restaurants valued experience," Tucker said in an email, "Tock let them monetize that experience in a thoughtful, sustainable way.' The Tock 10- The Firsts To commemorate its birthday milestone, Tock is looking back on its 10 years with 'The Tock 10.' This monthly collective celebrates 10 businesses that use the tool and groups them together under a common theme. The "Tock 10-The Firsts" list highlights some of the first restaurants who believed in the benefit of Tock and adopted the tool. Alinea (Chicago, IL) Lazy Bear (San Francisco, CA) Staplehouse (Atlanta, GA) Kadence (Orlando, FL) Spoon and Stable (Minneapolis, MN) otoko x watertrade (Austin, TX) Cow by Bear (San Diego, CA) Smyth (Chicago, IL) OSAKANA (New York, NY) Inn of the Seventh Ray (Topanga, CA) • On what the model unlocked for growth: o 'For many of these restaurants who were early adopters to pre-paid reservations, it meant consistency and creativity could coexist. They had predictable revenue, more control over service, and fewer operational headaches.' • On the broader shift in hospitality: o 'The best dining experiences are more than just a meal. They're curated, intentional, and often interactive. The restaurants in the original Tock 10 understood that early. They paved the way for how restaurants operate today. Tock gave them the tools to succeed on their own terms.' • On what's to come: o 'We evolve with our partners. The needs of the hospitality industry are constantly changing, and we listen and deliver.'
Eater
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
Boyle Heights' Legendary La Tortilleria Azteca to Shutter Original Location
Though it's the end of an era for La Tortilleria Azteca, it's not officially an ending. On June 13, the over-50-year-old restaurant and tortilleria will cease operations at its classic location on Caesar Chavez Boulevard and move permanently to its second location, less than two miles away on Atlantic and Beverly Boulevards. Thankfully, the news is not a full closure — but it's a sad removal of a historic Boyle Heights space. La Tortilleria Azteca is known for its long lines, the massive flour tortilla-making operation directly behind the ordering counter, and those signature chile relleno burritos. Owners Cynthia Hernandez and her parents, Candy and Juan Villa, purchased the restaurant in 2010. According to LAist, the family opened the second location in 2023 after learning that the landlord was considering selling the property. Strong Water Anaheim pop-up at Thunderbolt Anaheim's two-time James Beard Award nominee and Tiki bar Strong Water will pop up at Thunderbolt in Echo Park on Monday, July 7. The event runs from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and is a great opportunity to try their signature drinks without the long drive and meet owners Ying Chang and Robert Adamson. Tickets are $105 per person, which includes five drinks. Thunderbolt and Strong Water will open reservations on Tock this weekend (keep an eye on Instagram). A new nightclub heading to West Hollywood Sweetwater, a new nightlife and bar on West Hollywood's will open later this summer on the busy stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard near San Vicente Boulevard. Owner Berni Gambino tells Eater that her forthcoming spot is a lesbian bar and nightlife venue that's geared toward inclusion. Chef Daniel Patterson launches his pre-Jaca pop-up Chef Daniel Patterson is still on track to open his forthcoming restaurant, Jaca Restaurant. He'll move forward without his former partner and chef, Keith Corbin, and, during the summer months, will start preparing those future dishes in pop-up tasting menu format in a private space every Friday and Saturday. He describes Jaca Social Club as a preview of Jaca, inspired by his Bay Area restaurant Coi. Tickets are $250 per person and can be booked via Resy. On July 3, chef Michael Montilla and Brad Salzman will bring back one of Los Angeles's beloved restaurant recipes as Original Hollywood Chili. The duo secured the original recipe from the Chasen family and can be ordered here. Chasen's operated in Beverly Hills for decades before closing in 2000. A la carte pre-orders of the revival can be placed on its website. Two events to check out this weekend Good Boy and Friends does its fourth annual natural wine block party in the Arts District on June 28 from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. $59 tickets give entrants the chance to taste 40-plus wines from producers across the country, while the $149 VIP for priority check-in, a wine tote, and other goodies. Vendors like Ditroit, Burger She Wrote, and Simón Seafood will sell bites. Pick up tickets here. Infatuation's EEEEEatscon returns to Santa Monica's Barker Hangar this weekend with events on June 28 and June 29. Shake Shack is collaborating with the LA Fire Department with a special burger topped with Fire Engine red pepper relish, fried shrimp with fries, and a limited edition hat, while supplies last. A dollar from every purchase will benefit the LA Fire Department Foundation, a worthy cause in the wake of the wildfires that impacted the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January. In addition, all net revenues from the weekend will be matched by Chase (One must be a Chase cardholder to attend the event) and donated to a local organization to support small businesses. Other vendors include 88 Club with Trophies Burger Club, Auntie Yvette's Kitchen, III Mas, and Za Za Zá. The festivities take place both days from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.; entrance is $25 and food costs extra. See More: Intel LA Restaurant Closings
