Fireside Chat at 1871 with Jason Fried and Mohan Sawhney

Tock restaurant-ticketing system launches, takes reservations for Next

(From left) Grant Achatz, Brian Fitzpatrick and Nick Kokonas debuted Tock, their online restaurant reservation system last year. 

By John Carpenter Blue Sky

How much restaurant booking platform Tock says it raised in the first 30 minutes of its launch

Chicago restaurant booking platform Tock launched to the public Tuesday, sort of.

Tock is now taking reservations for West Loop restaurant Next, said Nick Kokonas, CEO of Tock and co-owner of Next.

This begins a slow rollout of the online platform, which Kokonas said he expects to see Chicago restaurants Alinea and Aviary — which he also co-owns — join within two weeks. About 20 other restaurants are scheduled to follow in July, Kokonas said. All have been using earlier versions of the system, he said.

Tock is based on a ticket-pricing system that Kokonas created for Next and Alinea, in which patrons pre-order meals the way they would order tickets to a theater performance.

Kokanas said the platform booked about $15,000 in sales in the first 30 minutes of its launch.

Kokonas said Tock won’t be aimed at only high-end restaurants like Alinea and Next and will have options for partial deposits rather than fully pre-paid meals. Deposit money will be applied to the cost of the meal, which customers will also be able to pay using the Tock system, he said.

Participating restaurants will pay a $695 monthly fee for the mobile-optimized platform, which will be free for diners, Kokonas said.

Tock enters an increasingly crowded space for restaurant apps, as companies look to create an Uber-like experience for diners. Kokonas noted that Tock is not a mobile app but a mobile-optimized web platform. This allows restaurants to interact directly with customers using Tock rather than requiring customers to download an app.

Kokonas wouldn’t specify how much Tock has raised, saying “a few million dollars.” Investors include Basecamp founder and CEO Jason Fried ⇒, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Jellyvision CEO Amanda Lannert ⇒ and 1871 CEO Howard Tullman ⇒.

Email: jccarpenter@tribpub.com • Twitter: @ScoopCarp

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

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PRE-CONFERENCE DAY—MONDAY, MAY 18

2:00 p.m. Registration Open (Inc.edu attendees only)
Location: 1871 (222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza; Chicago)

3:00–6:00 p.m. Inc.edu Courses

Supercharge your learning experience by attending a pre-event Inc.edu class. Each MBA executive-level classroom-style session is led by a business thought-leader. Seats are limited, and preregistration is required. There is an additional fee to participate.

• I. Pragmatic Leadership Skills to Move Your Agenda
  Instructor: Sam Bacharach, professor, Cornell Business School; founder, The BLG Leadership Group; and author, "Get Them on Your Side and Keep Them on Your Side," and columnist, Inc.com
  Location: 1871
• II. The Strength of Mind: What You Need to Succeed
  Instructor: Srikumar S. Rao, former Columbia Business School professor; creator of the Creativity and Personal Mastery (CPM) course and author, "Happiness at Work" and "Are You Ready to Succeed?"
  Location: 1871 (222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza; Chicago)

6:00–8:00 p.m. VIP Welcome Reception (Invite only)

Hosts: Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor of CNBC's "Power Lunch" and "Nightly Business Report"; and Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief, Inc.
Location: 1871 (222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza, 12th Floor, Chicago)

CONFERENCE DAY—TUESDAY, MAY 19

Location: The Chicago Theater (175 N State St, Chicago)

8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Registration Open

8:45 a.m. Welcome to IconicRemarks: Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor of CNBC's Power Lunch and Nightly Business Report; and Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief, Inc.

9:00 a.m. Welcome to Chicago

9:15 a.m. Do What You Like, Like What You Do
Speaker: Bert Jacobs, co-founder and chief executive optimist, The Life is Good Co.

10:00 a.m. How to Envision Profits and a Purpose
Speaker: Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO, Warby Parker

10:45 a.m. Networking Break

11:15 a.m. Brands We F**king Love
Speakers: Eric Ryan, co-founder, Method; and Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO, American Giant
Interviewer: Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief, Inc.

12:15 p.m. Iconic Session

1:00 p.m. Networking Lunch

2:15 p.m.The Reinvention Game: A Conversation with Marlo Thomas
Speaker: Marlo Thomas, actress, philanthropist and author, "It Ain't Over … Reinventing Your Life and Realizing Your Dreams Anytime, at Any Age"
Interviewer: Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief, Inc.

2:45 p.m. Entrepreneurial EcosystemsSpeakers: J.B. Pritzker, co-founder and managing partner, Pritzker Group; and Howard Tullman, CEO, 1871; and general managing partner, G2T3V
Interviewer: Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor of CNBC's "Power Lunch" and "Nightly Business Report"

3:45 p.m. Networking Break

4:05 p.m. All-Star Disruptors—Chicago Speakers: Jason Fried, founder and CEO, Basecamp; author, "Remote," "Getting Real" and "Rework"; and columnist, Inc.; and Matt Maloney, founder and CEO, GrubHub; and Richard Melman, founder and chairman, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises
Interviewer: Kate Rogers, small business and entrepreneurship reporter, CNBC Business News

5:05 p.m. Lessons from the Business Turnaround KingSpeaker: Marcus Lemonis, chairman and CEO, Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises and host of CNBC's "The Profit"

6:00 p.m. Iconic Program Ends

6:00—8:00 p.m. Closing Cocktail Reception

TOCK LAUNCH

VISIT THE SITE: www.tocktix.com

Welcome to Tock

NOVEMBER 30, 2014

Tock represents years of thought on solving a number of problems endemic to the restaurant industry. But it has applications far beyond restaurants to any small business that is time-slotted in nature.

When I started building Alinea with chef Grant Achatz in 2004 I knew nothing at all about the restaurant industry. I figured I knew a bit about technology and software so I could be helpful in that area. I started surveying the various systems available for reservations, POS, and customer resource management and it felt like traveling back in time. The options were limited, the technology outmoded, and the fees were penal. We did a lot of work with Excel spreadsheets and highlighters instead. Things haven't changed much.

The hospitality industry is focused on making customers happy, and every night is 'show time'. There isn't time to worry about optimizing software, analyzing seating templates, or figuring out new metrics to measure and improve operations. Our managers spend their time creating great experiences for patrons. It's like that for all restaurants.

When we opened Next it made sense, finally, to take a huge risk: sell tickets to a restaurant. Even many on our own team thought it was crazy, and plenty of people in the industry did as well. It worked - it worked incredibly well. So we tried it at Alinea with the same success. And then we created deposit tickets for Aviary with the same results. Other restaurants started emailing asking if they could try it too. Those emails haven't stopped... I get a few each day.

Tock is not in a race to be first to market or to make an incremental improvement or to save a few dollars over existing systems. Tock is the result of experimentation and the deep analysis of actionable data. We are building Tock to fundamentally change the economic practices of restaurants while creating a virtuous circle for consumers: minimizing wait-times, reducing no-shows, food waste, labor hours, and food costs, while enhancing the customer experience is good for everyone.

An amazing group of people have left their careers and stable positions to join our team. We've attracted investment from great minds in the technology industry. And we're honored to have chefs Grant Achatz, Thomas Keller and Ming Tsai, along with Rich Melman and his family, as investors and industry advisors. Together they represent the full spectrum of dining in America.

We can't wait to hear from restaurants around the world: tell us what you need, give us a wish list, and check out what we are doing at Tock. We know that the changes have come slowly to our industry. Now we're catching up.

Welcome to Tock!

Nick Kokonas and Team Tock

Google's Brian Fitzpatrick says he's got just the ticket for Alinea

Melissa Harris

CHICAGO TRIBUNEmmharris​@chicagotribune.com 

Brian Fitzpatrick is leaving Google to join Nick Kokonas and Grant Achatz in a restaurant venture. (Courtesy of Brian Fitzpatrick)

Brian Fitzpatrick, Google's first Chicago-based engineer and a leader in the company's work on censorship and government surveillance, is leaving the Internet giant to join chef Grant Achatz and business partner Nick Kokonas, the team behind Alinea, Next and the Aviary.

Fitzpatrick will be improving and expanding the restaurants' ticketing system, through which customers reserve seats for dinner just like they would for a play, concert or sporting event. Taxes and gratuity are included in the ticket price.

Already restaurants such as Trois Mec in Los Angeles and Aldea in New York have adopted the system. Other ticketed restaurants in Chicago include Elizabeth, 42 Grams and EL Ideas, although not all of them are using the system Fitzpatrick will be developing further.

Fitzpatrick, 43, is a co-founder with Inventables CEO Zach Kaplan of ORD Camp, Chicago's most exclusive technology conference. He starts his new role with Kokonas and Achatz in early December.

"It's the first thing I've seen to come around in a long time that seems good for everyone," Fitzpatrick said. "It makes the dining experience better for customers. The restaurant can be more profitable, and there's less food waste. And Nick doesn't have to hire someone to answer the phone all day and say, 'No.'"

Before adopting the ticketing system at Alinea, consistently rated among the top restaurants in the world, Kokonas employed three full-time workers to handle reservation lines, he wrote in a June blog post. The post, long enough to be deemed a manifesto for restaurant ticketing, has generated more than 1 million page views, Kokonas said.

"A high volume of calls, especially around the days we would open a month's reservations book, meant that callers often could not get through," he wrote. "One time so many people called that the entire 312-867 exchange went down. AT&T asked us if we were running a Groupon."

Fitzpatrick met Kokonas Jan. 14, 2009. He knows the date.

"I keep almost everything," he demurred, half-joking, in a joint phone interview with Kokonas, as he looked up the date. "Grant had come over to Google to give a talk."

Thereafter, Kokonas and Fitzpatrick kept bumping into each other at dinners or events. Fitzpatrick invited Kokonas to ORD Camp. And at some point, Kokonas began soliciting Fitzpatrick's advice, forwarding that blog post, for instance, and asking for feedback.

Fitzpatrick replied that he had already read the post. Twice.

"He asked me to vet some engineers, to help him find some people who are not going to screw him over," Fitzpatrick said. "So we sat in his kitchen and drank espresso for two hours. And I decided I didn't want to advise people on this. I wanted to do this. I think this is the future of restaurants."

Fitzpatrick joked that when he extended the offer, it was the only moment he'd ever seen Kokonas rendered speechless.

"I didn't expect it," Kokonas said. "But I instantly said, 'OK. We'll figure it out.' He's joining not as an employee but as a founding partner in this effort."

When Fitzpatrick launched Google's Chicago engineering team in 2005, the company employed him and 29 sales people here, he said.

"One engineer showed up in jeans, and everybody else was dressed up fancy," Fitzpatrick recalled. "And I thought, it's never going to be the same, folks."

Chicago is now home to more than 550 employees, including about 100 engineers, according to a Google spokeswoman.

Fitzpatrick, who goes by "Fitz," has not helmed the engineering team here for many years. He moved on to found and lead Google's "data liberation front," ensuring Google users can take their files and photos elsewhere, or delete them.

He also leads the company's transparency engineering team, which tallies and helps publish the number and types of government requests Google receives to remove content or turn over information about users for criminal investigations. His umbrella included attempted and achieved government censorship, concerns about copyright and trademark violations, as well as government surveillance.

"Fitz's vision, leadership and energy have made a big impact both here at Google Chicago and in the Chicago tech community," Jim Lecinski, the head of Google's Chicago office, said in a statement.

A New Orleans native, he came to Chicago to study Latin and minor in Greek at Loyola University. Prior to joining Google, he was a software engineer at CollabNet and Apple. He also co-wrote "Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others" with Ben Collins-Sussman.

Most importantly, he says he refuses to move to Silicon Valley.

The Economist: Chicago's technology sector - Start-up City

Chicago's technology sector

Start-up city

Dec 19th 2013, 15:35 by N.L. | CHICAGO

LESS than two years ago a new centre for digital start-ups, called 1871, opened up shop in Chicago. At first its 50,000 square feet of jazzy furniture, polished concrete and shiny glass were largely empty of people. Today things couldn't be more different as it thrums with entrepreneurs, laptops and lattes. Whiskery coders sit hunched on beanbags, tapping on Macbooks. In one spot a geek is on a video call. In another, two men are testing a circuit board while drinking coffee.

This co-working space is the most visible manifestation of a noticeable uptick in technology activity in the city. In 2012, a start-up company launched every 24 hours. The third quarter of 2013 was the digital-technology sector’s second best ever, with $265m raised. (Actual funding is probably far higher thanks to a non-disclosed investment in GrubHub, an online takeaway ordering service.) Three companies, Braintree, Train Signal, and Power2Switch, were acquired for a total of $845m according to Built in Chicago, a start-up website. Many other co-working spaces are springing up, too. The latest is called The Warehouse, and is being built by the founders of Groupon, a home-grown technology behemoth.

All this start-up activity is fascinating because venture funds used to refer to Chicago as the "flyover city". According to Patrick Spain, a local entrepreneur whose start-ups include Hoover's Inc, a research firm, among others, much has changed in recent years. He thinks 1871 has been critical as it has given the technology sector traction. The centre is a dynamic place where people with ideas can find out what is happening and get financial help and mentoring, he says: "All of a sudden you can get smarter, faster at no cost."  Many years ago, when Mr Spain was starting out, he needed to hire everyone he needed and it took millions of dollars to get to scale. "Today you can prove out a concept at under $1m and find the funding." 

A greater availability of venture capital has also probably helped the city's start-ups. As has a rich seam of local talent coming from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois and other institutions across the Midwest. (The problem has always been persuading the graduates to stay. The founders of Netscape, PayPal, Yelp and YouTube all studied at the University of Illinois but then left after graduation.) All of which means that Chicago is now ranked as one of the top ten cities in the world for starting a company, according to Startup Genome, which provides analysis on start-ups around the world.

There has also been a general change of tone. Bjoern Lasse Herman, the founder of Compass, which produces the Startup Genome report, says that in the past any Chicago start-up wanting venture capital would have been told to move to Silicon Valley. Now they are being encouraged to stay put.

Yet his report also suggests that the city has some weaknesses, most notably a conservative culture. Chuck Templeton, a local entrepreneur who founded Open Table, a restaurant-reservation site, is unfazed. Chicago, he explains, is not trying to be Silicon Valley or Boston. The city is good at being pragmatic. When Mr Templeton started Open Table he recalls that restaurants in New York and San Francisco would ask "who has this product?", while in Chicago they would ask "is this going to save and make me money?" Moreover, he says, companies in the city do not have the silly valuations sometimes seen on the west and east coasts, which means they do not feel obliged to pay more for talent than they need to. 

Being windy is good

Chicago’s reputation for being technologically conservative might be the flip side of having a large and diverse economy, with traditional industries such as manufacturing, retail, finance and agriculture. These are conservative businesses by heart, but all need to incorporate digital technologies. Jason Fried, an influential voice in the start-up scene whose company 37signals produces project-management software, says he does not think Chicago should try to be anything other than it is: "This should be the place where people build without funding, are scrappy and start up on their own." He also questions the way in which cities are ranked in terms of innovation. "In our industry we focus on a lot of the wrong things as success, such as rounds of funding raised," he says. "I see this mostly as failure. It means you need more and more money to survive, your customers are not paying, and you are not building a sustainable business." Mr Fried says he likes 1871, but reserves judgement for now on whether it is going to create many success stories.

Pragmatism and conservatism are its strengths, then, if not viewed through the myopic lens that compares every city with a strong technology sector to Silicon Valley. Indeed, another new report on the world's most competitive cities, points out that Chicago is an excellent alternative for companies currently looking for a world-class location for their software development activities. San Francisco and New York top the world's quality rankings, but are costly. 

Chicago’s technology sector also has the backing of its mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Mr Emanuel has overseen the city's first comprehensive technology plan, and he will go on the road in 2014 to recruit new technology graduates. He will also host a venture capital summit next summer right before the city's cool music festival, the Lollapalooza. Mr Emanuel says technology has been the fastest growing sector of the economy by far since he arrived in 2011, and he will double its size in the next decade. Statewide, technology jobs have been growing at 1.6%, faster than the national average of 1.1%. Even Purdue University, in Indiana, now offers a weekend MBA degree in town to turn science and technology workers into entrepreneurs. Chicago will never be Silicon Valley. That is a good thing.

Jason Fried Comments on New 1871 Focus

4

Dec 12, 2013 - Kira M. Newman for the Chicago Edition

37signals cofounder Jason Fried told a Tech Cocktail Sessions audience last week that Chicago shouldn’t try to imitate other successful startup scenes.

“I don’t want to see Chicago try and be San Francisco or try and be New York,” he said. “That’s a mistake, it will never happen, and there’s no reason to try and be something you’re not.”

Instead, he proposed that Chicago startups focus on the smarter path of building profitable, long-term businesses.

“I think Chicago could be a great place for building bootstrapped companies, long-term companies, companies that are focused on selling stuff, on revenues and profits,” he said. “I think that represents the City of Big Shoulders, that represents the hard-working Midwest, the whole ethos here.”

Other startups scenes focus on “blowing things up fast” and not on making money, Fried said, and that’s a “dangerous, dangerous thing.”

Fried added that the new CEO of 1871, Howard Tullman, has the right attitude. “One of the things he said is this is not a place to play entrepreneur. This is not a place to pretend. This is a place where you build something and you move on. And we have to be about getting people in and up and out. And I love that mentality, and I hope that he really makes that happen here.”