OpenTable was the first mover in the world of booking orders for restaurants around the globehttps://www.vox.com/2018/10/19/17698428/resy-restaurant-reservations-startup-opentable. After obtaining notoriety, they issued a massive IPOhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-opentable-idUSTRE5464CJ20090507 andhttps://press.opentable.com/news-releases/news-release-details/opentable-inc-prices-initial-public-offering/ resulting in a stock price peaking slightly over $100/share. After peaking, the company was by Priceline for $2.6 billionhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/priceline-to-buy-opentable-for-2-6-billion-1402660209. However, the investment faced turmoil as lawsuits and a $941 million write-down devalued the acquisitionhttps://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/in-house/ibm-sues-priceline-opentable-kayak-over-e-commerce-patents/ andhttps://skift.com/2016/11/07/priceline-takes-941-million-writedown-on-opentable/.
The devaluation triggered a reconsideration of OpenTable’s role in the market. OpenTable matured and no longer had a blue ocean strategy (https://www.launch-marketing.com/?p=6568) to rely on. Therefore, Priceline retooled and rolled back OpenTable’s operations while entering the emerging ultra-competitive food delivery service market involving Doordash and other competitors. However, no one is certain whether OpenTable has a future and history has yet to judge whether Priceline’s investment was a….