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Squarespace acquires Nick Kokonas’ reservations platform Tock for more than $400 million

Ecommerce platform to integrate table management and other capabilities

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

March 31, 2021

2 Min Read
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Squarespace has acquired reservations platform Tock for more than $400 million in cash and stock, the ecommerce company said Wednesday.

New York City-based Squarespace said the acquisition of the system, developed by the Alinea Group co-founder and co-owner Nick Kokonas, would allow its customers to integrate Tock’s “best-in-class” system for managing reservations and tables and taking orders for takeout and events.

Kokonas will remain Tock's CEO, he said in a Tweet. 

"Ecommerce within the restaurant and hospitality industries is a large and growing market opportunity," Squarespace Founder & CEO Anthony Casalena said in a release announcing the purchase. "I've long admired Tock's vision to reimagine how reservation-based businesses connect with their customers. We believe that together we will continue building on their success, bringing Tock's capabilities to our all-in-one product suite in service of our customers in the hospitality industry and beyond."

Chicago-based Kokonas said Squarespace and Tock “have a shared mission of elevating and enabling our customers' success and passion.”

"Combining Tock's unified platform and years of hospitality industry expertise with Squarespace's reach, resources, and design-forward products, in our view, creates an opportunity to deliver a best-in-class solution to millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses around the world," he added.

Related:Nick Kokonas launches Tock 20 with all-in-one system for delivery, pickup, reservations and events

Kokonas launched Tock in 2014, initially allowing his super-fine-dining restaurant Alinea to sell reservations in advance. Since then it has expanded its capabilities to include dynamic pricing — such as charging extra for prime-time reservations — takeout and delivery and event planning. In response to the pandemic it launched Tock to Go to allow restaurateurs to schedule their own takeout orders instead of relying on third-party delivery services.

The release said Tock is now being used by more than 7,000 operators, including neighborhood and destination restaurants, wineries and pop-ups, in 200 cities in 30 countries. It has processed more than $1 billion in pre-paid experiences as well as millions of standard reservations.

Other recent Squarespace acquisitions include appointment scheduling platform Acuity Scheduling and Unfold, an app that helps create better social media stories.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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