LudoBites Reservations Snapped Up in Under 90 Mins, OpenTable Crashes

Yesteday afternoon circa 5PM there was a mad rush to score a coveted reservation at Ludo Lefebvre's next pop-up, LudoBites 6.0. The resy line opened at 5PM where diners could route over to OpenTable via ludobites.com. Unfortunately, frustration ensued for many attempting to enter LudoLand, as it has happened in the past, the resy system (in this case, ahem, OpenTable) crashed for some and resys were all scooped up within 90 minutes. So, from the bottom of OpenTable's heart, sorry:

If you don’t know what LudoBites is, well, you should. It’s a dining sensation that’s single-handedly sweeping the City of Angels. A pop-up restaurant executed in sheer guerilla style by renowned chef Ludo Lefebvre and his wife/partner in culinary crime Krissy (aka FrenchChefWife), LudoBites has become the hottest, tastiest ticket in Los Angeles.

As you may imagine, the Lefebvres experience enormous demand for the unique dining experiences that are the roving LudoBites events. OpenTable stepped up to help them answer that demand in a democratic and efficient manner (first come, first reserved, if you will). However, while using our system for their latest event, LudoBites 6.0, all did not go according to plan.

We apologize to the Lefebvres and all of the diners who experienced technical problems while trying to book reservations for LudoBites 6.0 last night. LudoBites is a phenomenon that concentrates unprecedented reservation demand for a single restaurant with a limited number of tables in a very short window of time. We had a plan for how to customize our service to accommodate the extraordinary search volume for LudoBites 6.0, but we didn’t implement that plan properly. The traffic overwhelmed our systems, and some hopeful diners experienced intermittent problems until the restaurant was fully booked after less than 90 minutes.

OpenTable was built with the idea that securing a dining reservation should be effortless. We didn’t live up to that promise under the unique conditions of LudoBites, and we’ll be taking a closer look at our processes to ensure we deliver a consistently high-quality experience in the future.

To learn more about the talented Chef Lefebvre and the one-of-a-kind LudoBites, please visit LudoLefebvre.com.

[Photo: Zester Daily]