Hello! Welcome to Slate Money Food, our mini series on everything food related.

We are talking this week about restaurant reservations,

which are an absolutely fascinating subject.

I'm sure it's something that a lot of people

don't really think too much about,

but pick up that little corner of the carpet

and look underneath.

And there's a huge amount of stuff going on underneath there,

which Marissa Conrad knows everything about.

Marissa, hi.

Hi.

Introduce yourself.

Who are you and how do you know about this subject?

I'm a freelance journalist.

I write about culture, food, and economics.

Overlaps very nicely into the restaurant reservation world.

I recently covered the world of restaurant reservation platforms for New York Magazine,

and I'm just personally fascinated by the topic. So we are going to talk about the platforms,

because of course there are platforms, aren't there, there's open table and resi. We're going to

talk about how a restaurant reservations work from the restaurant end, from the diner end. We're going to talk about how a restaurant reservations work from the restaurant end, from the

diner end.

We're going to talk about the secondary market in reservations.

...