Food Industry's 'Yongbanjang'... Set to Become a Super App

Real-time Restaurant Reservation Management Platform 'CatchTable' Operated by
Yong Tae-sun, CEO of 'Ward'

Yong Tae-sun, CEO of Ward

As social distancing measures are lifted and restaurants regain vitality, innovative startups related to this trend are gaining attention. Hiring difficulties and labor cost issues, such as having to handle reservation calls and manage peak order times leading to labor shortages, are daily challenges faced by self-employed restaurant owners. Solving these problems, which food service entrepreneurs inevitably encounter, forms the business model and growth foundation of these startups.

‘Ward,’ which operates the real-time restaurant reservation platform CatchTable (service name), is a company providing IT-based solutions to improve restaurant management efficiency. Users can search for restaurants based on location, menu, price, and other preferences, then make reservations by simply entering the date, time, and number of people. Yong Tae-soon, CEO of Ward, prepared for entrepreneurship while working in marketing, data analysis, and planning at companies like NHN. Helping his mother run ‘Tudari’ in Seoul’s Myeonmok-dong since the late 1990s, he realized the potential of digitizing manual ledgers and POS terminals. At that time, he developed and implemented an in-house inventory management solution, which increased net profits and confirmed the business potential.

Since its official launch in September 2020, the platform surpassed 1.28 million monthly active users (MAU) in about 1 year and 9 months. There are 3,000 restaurants listed. It took over a year to reach 600,000 users, but it then took less than two months to exceed 1.2 million. The number of completed reservations also increased twelvefold to 120,000 per month compared to a year ago. The ‘no-show’ rate is about 0.5%. CEO Yong said, "Our goal this year is to secure 5,000 franchise stores and achieve 500,000 completed reservations per month," adding, "Through this, we can generate 100 billion KRW in monthly sales for restaurants."

While preparing for his startup, CEO Yong ‘caught’ the fact that consumers spend a lot of time and effort finding and booking restaurants that meet their desired conditions, which led to the creation of the CatchTable business model. He said, "It took me over two hours to find and book a place in Gangnam that sells Korean beef and has private rooms. I thought it would be great if, like hotels or airlines, you could input your conditions and instantly see restaurants available for real-time booking." They started with a B2B (business-to-business) solution first. Other reservation services faced issues because they lacked a database (DB) of actually available bookings, resulting in only partial confirmation of reservations. CEO Yong said, "Collecting the database for about three years before launching was the biggest help."

Solid experience and preparation allowed CatchTable to quickly establish itself in the market. Ward recently successfully completed a Series C funding round worth 30 billion KRW. Recently, they have enhanced community features where users can record and share their gourmet experiences and check reviews and visited restaurants from friends and influencers. CEO Yong emphasized, "Our long-term goal is to become a super app for the food service industry by integrating waitlist management, workforce management, sales management, table ordering, kiosks, and more to create synergy," adding, "We want restaurant owners to focus on food and increase profits, thereby nurturing the joy of gourmet dining."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.