The world of hospitality can be thankless at times. With customers coming from all aspects of life, it can be tough to make everyone happy with the service or product that they received. What does it take to build a successful hospitality product? As part of our Building For Hospitality series, Tomer Molovinski, Fmr Consumer Product Lead at Resy, talks about his journey in product management, the hospitality principles he follows, and economic inspirations that help him stay ahead of the restaurant game.
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Hospitality Products Part 1: Find People With Similar Philosophies and Pay Attention To Pain Points
At Resy I focus on our consumer products. Mainly our app, the Resy app, Resy.com, and the widgets that live on restaurant websites. I cover a lot of our consumer product initiatives, and it helps that I worked as a product manager for the majority of my career.
In fact, the path that led me to Resy began back in college. When I was in college, I started working at my brother’s restaurant. After graduating I worked for Live Person, which specializes in conversational commerce for the quick service restaurants. Ever since then I’ve just been interested in the intersection of restaurants and technology.
Working With Others With Similar Philosophies
“I am a huge fan of Danny Meyer and his philosophy on hospitality. He believes that great products and services do things for customers. Danny works with Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) and working with them has been great. In fact, Union Square Hospitality not only invested in Resy, but they committed to using it across its restaurant portfolio.”
“We’re all about hospitality and Danny and his group are too. Whenever we kick off a new initiative, we talk with USHG and get their insights. A lot of our products obviously touch them and getting their insight helps on the consumer side of our business. They’re serving guests, and at the end of the day our products are serving their guests too. In addition, I think what made Resy what it is today is the fact that we built the product for high demand restaurants.”
Observing the Market to Build a Product That Solves Problems
Resy stood out from the competition because we observed things that most people thought was normal. For example, most people think that all reservations at restaurants need to be for a table inside. However, we decided to think differently and let people make different types of reservations, like patios. This feature resonated with a lot of restaurants because they did offer these experiences. However, there wasn’t really a great solution on the market for them.
By creating more of these custom features, Resy opened the door to these custom experiences.
About the speaker
I’m excited to lead consumer product at Resy — a mobile app that powers reservations at the world’s best restaurants. I joined the team because I’m super passionate about hospitality, and helping restaurants deliver amazing guest experiences. I believe the world is ready for a reservation app that cuts through the noise — making it possible to dine out at the best restaurants without having to scroll through an endless list of mediocre options. Prior to joining Resy, I had the privilege of being one of the first product managers to work on Guest Center, OpenTable's cloud-based reservation management system, and launched the product globally in February 2014. Later that year I led the marketing & development of OpenTable’s mobile payments solution, a ground-breaking innovation that made up the core of the company's mobile strategy. Between OpenTable and Resy, I spent 15 incredible months at i.am+, an AI and wearables company founded by pop-culture icon will.i.am. It was awesome working for such a creative force, and I learned so much from the experience. Specialties: B2B/B2C product management & marketing, go-to-market strategies, service design, agile product development, innovation, idea creation, messaging/positioning development, business strategy, pricing & promotions, acquisition & engagement marketing, quantitative customer research, qualitative customer insights, and strategic partnerships.
About the host
Thomas Daly is Principal Product Manager at Samsung NEXT leading zero to one initiatives. Prior to that, he served as the Chief Product Officer for Spacious.com, which was later acquired by The We Company (WeWork). Before that, Daly was at Samsung Electronics by way of an acquisition of BOXEE, a TV-connected streaming device. He has worked in various product roles for nearly 15 years.