LIKE a rapidly increasing number of restaurants, the Brentwood Restaurant & Lounge maintains a computerized database on its customers' preferences, habits and idiosyncrasies. Although these notations are designed primarily to provide better service, they also include such entries as:
* "Please provide prompt service. He believes he's the biggest writer in Hollywood and has told us so."
* "Don't seat at [table] #19. He tried to have sex there last time he was in."
* "Never take this person's reservation. Ever ... ever ... if you value your life."
These directives -- which become a permanent part of the customer's dining history, instantly available to the restaurant staff with a couple of touches on the computer screen -- are made possible thanks to software developed by OpenTable.com, an online restaurant reservation service.
OpenTable.com has more than 1,400 member restaurants in more than 30 cities -- including 88 in Los Angeles. Most tend to be upscale -- Bastide, Spago Beverly Hills, Melisse, Michael's and L'Orangerie among them -- but some are much more modest (Bombay Cafe, for example, and Pete's Cafe & Bar, World Cafe and Barefoot restaurant).
Although OpenTable initially emphasized online reservations in its marketing campaign, that function accounts for, on average, only about 5% of the total reservations at member restaurants. A more important element of the service -- to restaurants and customers alike -- is the data-tracking capability of the OpenTable software for all customers, no matter how they made their reservations. OpenTable enables restaurants to collect and access quickly such information as their customers' favorite wines, waiters, water and tables, their food allergies, their birthdays and anniversaries -- everything they need to know to "treat every customer like a VIP," in the words of Thomas Layton, chief executive of OpenTable.
Making customers feel pampered
In Los Angeles, where egos seem especially large -- and especially fragile -- and where dietary habits often range from the merely exotic to the obsessively ascetic, the ability to make customers feel pampered and important is especially useful.
"OpenTable lets us give customers the feeling that, 'These people know who I am and they care about what I want and what I like and don't like,' " says Harvey Friend, general manager of the Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles.
