How Two Founders Made Impossible Reservations Possible

0:00ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters. I'm Mina Barakat. And I'm Sarah Goldring, and you're listening to Sweet Success.

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1:16Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Sweet Success. I'm your host, Katie Klein, and today I'm thrilled to welcome Mina Barakat and Sarah Goldring to the show. Mina and Sarah are the co-founders of Rezex, a New York-based reservation exchange platform that's changing the way people access some of the hardest-to-book restaurants. What started as an Instagram-based reservation trading community quickly evolved into a fast-growing technology platform catering specifically to high-demand hospitality experiences. Now, with a sleek app, a recurring revenue model, and a community of more than 150 ,000 consumers, ResX is helping reshape the reservation economy.

1:59Mina, Sarah, thank you both so much for joining me today. Yeah, we're so excited to hear. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Yeah. With co-founders, I'm always really interested to hear your origin story. So how did you guys first meet? And then how was the idea of ResX born? Yeah. So Mina and I first met in 2019. I had just started at a tech company and was lucky enough to be seated next to Mina on my first day. I always joke that sitting next to Mina was the best thing that ever happened to my social life because I'm very much a person who loves to just go into the weekend not knowing what my plans are, seeing where the night will take me.

2:37And Mina was just this treasure trove of restaurant recommendations. And she always had these extra reservations that she would share with me and my friends. So it was really just a game changer. And it all started from there. Yeah, we were definitely polar opposites. I don't know if Sarah has like ever booked a reservation in her life. And I was obsessive. Like I would book reservations. Weeks out, I was a person waking up at 8am, you know, staying up till midnight to get reservations. When I first moved here in 2019, I was shocked by how insane the reservation culture was. And this was something that Sarah and I would always chat about.

3:10Where did you move here from? Boston. Straight out of college. Okay, so it was less crazy there in terms of reservations. Because you're right. I'm thinking like, Sarah, did you ever go to a restaurant before you met, Mina? Because it is so impossible to get good tables. I know. It was just Taco Bell for me until then. Okay. Okay, so you guys meet, you hit it off, you recognize the polar opposites, but you like that in each other. You become friends, you start going to dinners together, restaurants, reservations, etc. How then does a ResX come about? Yeah, so we went our separate ways in COVID and came back to the city.

3:49And I don't know if you lived in New York at the time, but there was this crazy snowstorm post COVID. My friends and I all lived in the West Village. And we walked in on a Saturday night to Via Corotta with a huge group, took over the restaurant. And if you live in New York, you know that that's just an insane concept in itself. And that night I called Mina, who I hadn't spoken to in months. And I was like, I don't know what there is about this reservation idea we've had, but there's clearly something there. And the rest is history. We started the Instagram page the next day. We essentially created an Instagram account where we could just share reservations that we could no longer make.

4:22Like we would post a physical story and then anyone could just DM and pick up the reservation. it literally said like dm if interest if interested and people would just like first come first serve take the reservation um and i mean from there it just ended up spiraling and to con a life of its own and was it called res x at the time we worked for so long because we first spelled res x with an extra e in there and that didn't really work out for us um and then e x yeah uh but no it was called nyc res x and um i think within a few weeks it had grown to 30 40 000 followers pretty quickly over time and the screen time that mina and i had just fielding all the dms because these were like if you think about it last minute hard to get reservations in new york at that time were an impossible commodity so as soon as people started discovering our page, we just got flooded with inbounds.

5:20And what's really cool about it, though, is it was it was so much more than that. It wasn't just people DMing about reservations. There was very much this like community aspect to it where people would also send us pictures of their outfits and say, OK, I took this reservation. Is this is this the right like vibe for this restaurant? What should I order when I get there? Do you want to come with me? Like we got the craziest messages. So the account just really spiraled into what we like to call a really cool community today. And when it started, was it all reservations that you guys had made and then you were kind of sharing?

5:51Or was it also inbound people saying, I can't make this tonight, see if somebody else wants to take it? It's interesting because when we first started the account, it very much was like to solve a problem that Sarah and I were facing. And like I used to always DM my group chats and just say like, guys, I have a carbone at 8 p.m. Someone please take this. Like, I know this is such a great reservation. so we thought that this was just going to be used among like our friend group maybe like a slightly extended group so when we were at like 20 30 000 followers in a few weeks like it just completely took us by surprise and i think that's when we realized like this is a much bigger problem than just us like this is something that you know thousands of new yorkers are facing and that's when we kind of realized like there's a huge opportunity here and like within a week or two we were getting random submissions from people that we didn't even know.

6:38To see that kind of growth online that quickly, it tells you, like you said, right away, wow, we're really onto something. And then I think, Sarah, what you were talking about with the types of messages that your community starts to send in, that also brings you down another path too, of saying, oh, people want to know what the vibe is going to be like and what they should wear and what those favorite meals are and what they can't miss on the menu. What was the restaurant reaction to this at first? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think it kind of sits at the heart of the problem we were solving, which is up until then, all of the technology, all of the infrastructure around restaurant reservations was built for the experience of the restaurant, where when you think about Resi, Open Table, all those services, they're really meant to help those establishments manage their tables.

7:30And the experience of the person going in and booking the reservation becomes an afterthought. And that's, I think, where so much of the frustration came from, from friction in getting a reservation somewhere you wanted to go in the first place. And so ResX being the first place to really cater to that was definitely breaking down barriers and introducing just change to a system that had been in place for a long time. And that's always going to cause friction. But I think the nature of it being peer-to-peer, being so community friendly in terms of these are regular New Yorkers pumped to be sitting at that table, not someone who bought the reservation for thousands of dollars on some scalping site made a huge difference in the restaurant perception.

8:09And as that education has taken place, it's actually been pretty positive across the board. It'll vary, but it's really been an interesting growth story for us. And was there a moment where you realized how to turn it into a business? Because as we touched on, you're seeing huge growth, you're seeing really great engagement. But at this point, there's really no money changing hands except for when the diners show up at the restaurant, of course. How did you take that into an actual business idea? Yeah, when you think about our screen time in like literally in our DMs, hiding in the bathroom at work, messaging thousands of people every day, we kind of had our moment that like 10 years ago, people would say like, this was us living in our parents' garage, working 23 hours.

8:57we were just falling apart physically we had no social ads and we called each other and we were like this needs to stop like either we turn it into a business or we have to shut it down because my hair is falling out and what happened at the time was there was this ability to put content behind a paywall on Instagram that rolled out so without even building an app without building real infrastructure we were able to start monetizing like a premium subscription and from there we We were able to accumulate enough revenue to build out the app. And since then, it's been it's very user driven, I would say, in terms of what we're charging for what you're seeing on the app.

9:32And it's really proven itself in terms of product market fit there. Yeah. Instagram was a great way for us to test all of that. We didn't have to get real estate on people's phone. You know, everyone was already using the platform. and to Sarah's point, like being able to roll that feature out was also a great way for us to test people's appetite to, you know, even subscribe or pay to something like this. Yeah. When you guys did shift off of Instagram to the app, to the business that it is today, did you take fundraising? Because I imagine if so, you had this amazing proof point to be able to say, look at this community we have, look at how much revenue we're already making just on Instagram.

10:12We haven't even really commoditized this yet. I would imagine that would make the investor community really excited by that. Talk about like a proof of concept. Yeah. And you nailed it. The investor community was super excited about it. We got a ton of inbounds. But at the same time, we were generating enough revenue and cash flow to not actually need investment or dilution at the time. So we've been bootstrapping this for the most part. And I think we just feel so much ownership over our product and over the growth and fit that we've seen so far that we've yet to really engage formal fundraising for that reason.

10:47Wow, that's amazing. I feel like if this was Shark Tank, Mark Cuban would be clapping for you right now. I'll do it for you. I want to add one thing to that is we could have taken, you know, a ton of money early on, built the app very early and automated everything. I think there was a ton of value in us doing this manually for so long because it taught us like all the ins and outs of our business and the product and all the edge cases. And ResX is operationally very, very heavy, I'm sure you can imagine. And so being able to do, you know, all these things manually for so long, I think taught us a ton.

11:23Yeah. What was the moment when you both said, we're going to leave our jobs and do this full time? Yeah. So I actually ended up quitting and going full time a year after we launched the Instagram, which was when we launched the app. So 2023, April is when I went full time. And Sarah, how about for you? I'm actually still at my company, but they've been super supportive through this whole process. Wow, that's amazing. That's so great. What do you guys see as like the pros and cons between entrepreneurship and a W-2 job? Because Sarah, I think what you just said is the reality for a lot of us of we need to get businesses to a certain place before we take that leap for a litany of reasons.

12:07Yeah, it's definitely, I think, the ownership aspect. I think there's obviously a ton of creative freedom in building your own product, but it is all-consuming. ResX is the first thing I think about when I wake up, and it's the last thing I think about. I feel like we are one. I literally get introduced in public as, hey, this is the ResX girl. But there is something that's so fulfilling about, you know, seeing your product being used by people every single day. And I actually just met someone the other day who was like, hey, like me and my husband were so sick last week. We had strep and we know we had an anniversary dinner booked and we submitted on ResX and it saved us a$200 fee.

12:43So it's so great to see it like solving real issues for people. And I think that's what makes it worth it. Even if our hair is falling out. So still no balance has been struck then. We're getting there. What is the team structure like? We're incredibly lean. You know, to Sarah's point, like from the start, like we've been very intentional about hiring and our costs. And so we're a very small team. Something really cool, though, I'd add is this app was fully built like by our users, both in terms of them kind of telling us what they want out of the product, but also every single one of our employees was a ResX power user who just wanted to be part of it.

13:25But even the initial app we built, you wouldn't imagine how many software engineers were DMing ResX saying, I want to turn this into an app for you guys. Please let me turn this into an app for you guys. So everyone that's been a part of the ResX journey has been from the beginning really bought in and a user already. And I think that's helped us to shape and grow this with just so much authenticity to the mission, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And you have people invested in what they want the product to become. so you know that they're going to be making great decisions and bringing you great ideas because they want to use the product too.

13:59Exactly, yeah. You'd be shocked how many people are willing to, or would love to work for ResX part-time to be paid in reservations. It's crazy. Interesting, interesting. I mean, I can see that. We did an April Fool's joke on, like a month ago, and it essentially was like, we're hiring a chief reservation officer, and we made the description just like absurd, like$10 ,000 stipend per month, like a gym membership. I thought it was clearly an April Fool's joke. We had so many LinkedIn messages, people saying, hey, I'm interested in the CRO role that you guys have, where can I send my resume? But it was great to see kind of the community excited about working with ResX and being a part of it.

14:47Yeah, there's a story for you guys. your next hire came from an April Fool's joke. It's probably true. Yeah. I did read a great story about how your first Valentine's Day felt a lot like your Super Bowl. Obviously, that's a big day for last minute reservations. Can you talk a bit about that day? How early in the process was that and what you saw working really well and what made you think, okay, we need to shift a bit more going forward to make this more manageable. Yeah. Our first Valentine's Day, to make the picture for you, like we would set alarms for 5.30 a.m. You would line up your food for the day.

15:28You would have your station and you knew you weren't moving until at least midnight. But it's so fun and so chaotic at the same time. The amount of girlfriends making backup reservations because they don't trust their boyfriends, the amount of desperate boyfriends calling us and pleading for help. It's just so much fun. But yeah, the activity on Valentine's Day is like nothing else. But it's not just that. For us, like when you think about the experience of going out to dinner, having a great reservation, a ton of Valentine's Day shows and experiences as well. Having a bad experience on Valentine's Day, there's just so much like build up to it that that's just like the worst thing that can happen.

16:07So we go the extra mile. I like to think every day, but on Valentine's Day, especially where Mina and I individually follow up on every single reservation on Valentine's Day to the point where I had a user this year even say like, why is some random iMessage like texting me about my reservation? And I was like, hey, I'm the founder. Just worried that you guys are going to be late to your show. Like, hope you have a great night. So for us, it's more about making sure that day is perfect for as many people as humanly possible. Yeah, I can't tell you how people have my personal phone number from that day.

16:39They don't all know that, you know, we're the co-founders, but, um, but yeah, I've had a few of them follow up being like, Hey, can you get me a reservation at 8 PM tonight? I'm like, that's not how it works. That's amazing. Valentine's Day is always, it's obviously our busiest, but also one of my favorite days of the year, but we had a 95 % claim rate this past Valentine's Day, which is crazy. Wow. So 95 % of all reservations submitted were claimed. And quite counterintuitively, you guys have actually talked about wanting to make dining feel more spontaneous again, which as we talked about, Mina, in the beginning, New York is not known for that.

17:19If you want a great reservation, you need to know when they're opening their reservations. You need to be the first one either on the website or calling the restaurant and hoping to get that table, which most likely you still won't get. So why do you think restaurants have become so difficult to access, particularly in a city like New York? I think social media has been a big part of this. I think back in the day, people used to just go to their local neighborhood spot. Now everyone wants to go to the spot that they're seeing on Instagram, on TikTok, on Substack. And so all of a sudden you have thousands of people wanting to go to the same place, which does create a bit of this hype culture.

17:57So I think that's been a huge contributing factor, especially in cities like New York and London. That, and I would just say the infrastructure is not built for the booker and it makes it so much more difficult to get in at the last minute at anywhere good. The reservation apps tend to surface like the incentives for them to surface reservations for you are very different than the incentive of I'm Sarah Goldring and I want a great dinner tonight. It's not entirely aligned. And I think that that breaking point is actually what causes a lot of the problem for users just looking for a great night, especially as someone who can't make it anymore just as much as someone trying to claim it.

18:36Yeah, it almost feels a bit like restaurants are less about the food and more about the scene or like you guys have been alluding to with social, like, did you get the photo or did you post that you were there? Almost like social currency in a way. For sure. People just want to be a part of the conversation. They want to be able to say, I went to New York and I went to the corner store and I got Mimi's frozen yogurt. They just, they want to be a part of it. But yeah, it's sad to say that it's not it's no longer like food isn't the main part of it, but the it's the whole experience. It's the ambience.

19:09It's the vibe. It's the crowd. How does the dining room make you feel? You know, what was the process of even getting the reservation and getting in? So I will say, though, that there is that quality layer where like those top tier restaurants that have just best in class food are always going to be in demand in Res X. And there's always that layer of like true food snobs who want to be tasting the best pasta. They don't care what the line is outside. That's always there underneath it. There's definitely this layer now to your point of hype culture as restaurants come and go for sure. And those restaurants will go, you know, the ones that don't hit all these things and are just social media hype, like they typically don't last.

19:51You guys touched on earlier something that I imagine makes you really good partners to each other, which is your inherent differences from one another. But what is it that you think makes your relationship as co-founder so successful? And what advice would you give other people who are thinking about finding a business with someone else to make sure that they're gonna have a strong working relationship? Yeah, there is no way that this would have worked with any other pair. Frankly, Mina and I are very different, but we're extremely similar in the way that we're both irrationally committed to having ResX be as great as it possibly can.

20:29And what that means is that when we disagree about things, we disagree very passionately and we argue about them. But there's something so satisfying and also comforting in knowing that your co-founder cares so much that they're fighting over this tiny little detail with you that makes it really easy to move on and move through these arguments like water because you're really on the same page about the long-term goals. And I think that trust that's developed between us and knowing no one else in the world cares about our baby that is ResX the way we both do is what allows us to be so strong together.

21:01I don't know, Mina, if you agree. Oh, a thousand percent. I also think having a co-founder is the best thing you can do because Sarah and I push and challenge each other to like defend every single thought and, you know, big decision. So I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Yeah. In a way, I mean, in my professional experience, I think the best ideas come from multiple people. Even if I think I have the best idea ever, it always gets better when I have someone who's equally invested who's like, yeah, but what if we did it this way? And then I'm like, well, maybe not that way, but this way.

21:35And then all of a sudden, something else is created that is so much better than where we started. So I can understand that, why you would say that you're both super invested in one thing. You might have differing opinions, but at least you really trust that each other has the best interest of ResX at heart. Yeah. And what's important is us being able to like come back to home base after like an intense argument. So. What have been some of the hardest moments of building the company? Oh my gosh. Our first big fight was after our first Valentine's Day where we did the 5.30 a.m. to 1 a.m. like relentless shift.

22:12And at 1.15 a.m. we had our first fight because we were just so exhausted from the day. Like typically it just comes from, if you think about it, right, like our peak hours are Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday brunch, all the times when you're supposed to be out there living your life. And we gave that up for like a few years at a time in order to build this into what it is. And I think that just wear and tear. We used to have to, I'm not exaggerating, time our bathroom breaks to make sure that one of us was always like on at all times. We had a shower schedule. So I think just the natural friction of that is going to wear on you over time.

22:47But it's knowing that at the end of the day, you trust each other so completely that any of that is just kind of water under the bridge. Yeah, it's definitely the manual work that went into this. We used to get DMs all the time when we were on Instagram from people saying, why aren't you guys, you know, charging people for this? You should be charging per reservation. I'll pay you hundreds of dollars for a carbon reservation. And that wasn't the point. Like we did this for a year before we, you know, even turned on the subscription. But I think that was so valuable because it allowed us to organically build this community.

23:20We wouldn't have gotten there if we, you know, launched this page. And from the start, we're like, pay$10, you know, to get access to these reservations. So I think doing this manually for so long and being in the weeds and kind of being very close to our users is what allowed us to get to where we are. Now with the app, is there a lot more automation behind it? or is there still a lot of you guys in the weeds doing the doing? There's a ton more automation behind it, but we've been extremely committed to making sure the experience still feels just as organic as it did in the early days. And I think that's extremely important to us, right?

23:54Because this isn't an app where you can come in and pay to get access to the best reservations. It's not an app where you can know the right people at the right spot and like have to either pay to play or be really connected. And I think that's become a big part of both experience, ticketing, reservation culture all around. We really want to democratize access to basically being spontaneous again. Like we want regular people to be able to access all these reservations. And we want them to have that same feeling of being part of the ResX community when they do it. Because it's just so much better that way.

24:28Like regular people passing them to regular people and being excited to walk into that same restaurant. So for us, that is front and center of everything we do in terms of the product. That's very cool. And I think that is such an antidote to the world of AI and apps and automation, automation, automation, that I could see that being a real point of differentiation for you guys. Definitely. Yeah. ResX has already expanded beyond restaurants into things like Broadway shows and helicopter rides. Was that always part of your long-term vision or did that come out organically as well? The coolest part about ResX, right, is as much as Mina and I would like to tell you we have a perfect path in place and this was supposed to happen on year three, day two.

25:12Our users have fully told us what they want and where ResX is going to go. And we spend all of our time making sure we're listening to them at every step of the way. So even when we were an Instagram page, the amount of tickets like Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets, I remember looking at each other and being like, what have we created here? We get every type of experience you could think of. Nail appointments, workout classes, vintage shopping tours, like crazy stuff. And the thing is, whether or not we built the flow for it in the app, like our users have made it work because that's what they want to see there.

25:46And for us, we've really just focused on responding to that properly and facilitating it as frictionlessly as possible. So we're actually really excited. That's part of our real product roadmap for the rest of the year to roll out a better experience like within the app flow for that. So, yeah, look out for that this year. We're pumped. You'd be surprised how many niche experiences exist in this city. And there's, you know, there's something for everyone. Like so many times I see something on the feed and I'm like, who's going to claim this? And it gets claimed within 15, 20 minutes. So it's great to see that.

26:17What excites you both the most about the future? I think what's really cool about the way ResX works is it's peer to peer. And it works, to your point, across any experience. you could submit a seat at your grandma's kitchen table and it works in the ResX functionality. You could submit your haircut in 20 minutes and it works in the ResX functionality. And what that flexibility means is that whatever's on the ResX feed is something that, one, is sold out everywhere else. You can't get access to it. But two, is like the real pulse of what is in demand and what is trending in whatever city you're in.

26:53And that flexibility and that almost like live feed of what is the cutting edge of what's fun and new and trending, makes the TAM for this just huge. There's so much that we can do with that and so much that our users have already started using it for that we see this as becoming like the one-stop shop for last-minute plans in any given city. Like the place you go when either something you have you need to cancel because your plans change or because you're just excited to see where the weekend takes you. And I think that openness, like the open-endedness of what this could become is what excites us the most.

27:27Mina, same for you? She hit the nail on the head. Amazing. I want to do a fun little rapid fire round for you guys. And this is definitely not selfishly motivated because I'm so out of touch with what is cool right now. This is for the audience. So first question, what's the hardest reservation to get in New York right now? Fort Charles. Always Fort Charles. Yeah. Okay. Which is consistently the most coveted? Still always Fort Charles. That place is just an absolute New York establishment. And it's so small with so few tables that I think it's just always going to be that way. Listen, it breaks our app when it gets approved from how many people have it on their notifications and try to come in at once.

28:12And so that's like a big thing that we've been working on and trying to solve. But yeah, yeah, Fort Charles is definitely the most in demand. Which is the most underrated? We disagree on this. For me, it's Lourdes just because everything there is so good. It's British cuisine, which I feel like is pretty underrated in general. A lot of people are turned off by English food, but I mean, everything there is so good. It's definitely one of my favorites in the city. I absolutely love Palma and the West Village. I don't think it gets enough love. It's just adorable, great food, great vibe. What's the restaurant that you both most want to try that you haven't tried yet?

28:51For me, it's Thai Diner Brunch. I've been there for dinner, but it is very, very difficult to get a brunch reservation or breakfast reservation in general. And your best chances are during the week. So I still haven't been, but it's very high on my list. For me, it's it's Rayo's. I want to see if it lives up to the hype. I want to see what it's all about. What place would you go to impress out of towners? I think it's for me, it's Teresi, because it's one of those restaurants. And we spoke about this earlier on the call. It hits everything. It gets the crowd, the food, the ambiance, the vibe, the dining room.

29:27Like there's not a lot of restaurants that can hit all those things. And to me, it's a very New York restaurant. And so that's up there. Probably Coda as well. For me, it's Tatiana. I think it's just so unique with the Afro-Caribbean cuisine that you're not going to get it anywhere else, but it's just everything on that menu is incredible and so different that I think when people come into New York, they expect to kind of be wowed. And for me, Tatiana is that. And which is the staple that you could return to time and time again? We're both obsessed with Hillstone. Yeah. I think that it gets a bad rap sometimes, but there is something for everybody there.

30:05The experience like front to back in terms of their hospitality is 10 out of 10. Like when you order a martini at Hillstone, they're constantly switching out your gas your glass with a chilled one to make sure that it's always fresh um the the menu is excellent but it's diverse enough that you can bring a vegetarian you can bring someone gluten free you can bring your parents or a date i i think hillstone's just awesome mina agree from your side yeah and i was gonna add to that i think hillstone is one of those restaurants you can go on a date you can go on a girl's dinner you can go for a work dinner you can bring your parents like it works for every single occasion and it's actually one of the most popular submissions on ResX.

30:43And so I think for that very reason is that, you know, you can go for anything really. I am really surprised. So Hillstone has now come up twice in the last like week. Another guest of this show, Adam Shane, who's the owner of Yoga Joint New York, he also brought up Hillstone as well. I used to go forever ago when I lived here before I moved to the UK and I'm obsessed with their veggie burger. I'm not a vegetarian, but that veggie burger, I have dreams about it still. So I'm kind of happy to hear that it's still cool and in the mix. It's great. Yeah, the spinach artichoke dip never fails. Yes, a true classic.

31:22Okay, ladies, I want to ask you the last three questions that I ask every guest. You will probably have different answers for them, but let me know. First is, what was the best hospitality experience that you've ever had? So this might surprise people, but for me, it's Carbone Miami. And I only say that because I went for a solo dinner there when I was in Miami, I think like a year and a half ago now. And I sat at the bar. And I don't know if it's because they felt bad for me, but the staff was lovely. They spoke to me throughout the whole dinner. And I solo dine a lot, especially in London. Like I can't always find friends to come with me to have dinner on like a Monday, Tuesday night.

32:00But this was just like a lovely experience from beginning to end. So for me, that was one of the best dinners that I've had. I think for us, like, the way we think about this is maybe a little bit different than your average guest on here. Because for us, it's not really about once you're sitting down what the hospitality experience is. We've been so obsessed with zooming out and the bigger picture from front to back of not just I'm already at the restaurant, but it's earlier that day. And I know I have a last minute first date tonight and I don't know where to go. It's that experience of knowing where I'm going, getting into the table okay, feeling well seated by the hostess or maitre d' or whoever it is, the service the whole time.

32:40And I think that like solving the outer edges of that in terms of the lead up and kind of the friction points is the point of ResX. But in terms of like places where I've really felt like they've excelled, I really love like the Moneta Tavern, Pastis, Sodeon, like restaurant family. I think they do a really good job of making it personal. On the flip side of that, what was the worst hospitality experience that you guys have ever had? So this is something I actually feel kind of strongly about. There's a lot of restaurants, well, one in particular I remember that we had a pretty bad experience with, where we had a reservation for four and the fourth person dropped out at the last minute.

33:19They were feeling sick. And we showed up with three people for a four-person table and they gave us such a tough time. And we understand if like you need to charge us for fine, you know,$50 per person for that empty seat, that's fine. But we even said we're like, we'll order, you know, for the same amount for four people. And they're like, sorry, we have to give up your table. It needs to be exact seating. Like wait for another table to come available. And we ended up waiting for an hour. And it's like, come on, that defeats the whole point of hospitality. Waited for an hour to then be sat at another four top because you are three people.

33:52It's not even like you change shape of tables. That would drive me crazy. Exactly. And we're not like two people showing up to like a four or five person reservation. You know, it's like one person. And yeah, we're seeing a bit more of this. So that was just a frustrating experience. Oh, that drives me absolutely crazy. Or when they won't seat you until your whole party is there. I actually really respect, Mina, you probably see this a lot in the UK. When you would check into a nice restaurant in London, they'll be like, you have the table until X time. And to me, I'm like, give me an end time, but let me sit down now and start ordering and that it's fine.

34:31Like the whole, like we have to wait for all of you drives me nuts. Yeah, yeah. They're very rigid about that there. Yeah. Sarah, what about you? No, I agree. Your point about the end time though, when they say it up front, I respect it a lot more. But when you are sitting down eating and you can tell how much the wait staff want to turn the table on you and they start kind of taking plates off the table, before people are done and making you feel pressure to get up. I hate that. Me too. Me too. What was the worst hospitality experience you've ever had? I think in general, it's really just that that has become so much more common here.

35:07The commoditization of these tables, when we talk about the hot tables that you were asking about earlier, the way social media has turned a lot of these places into flash pan successes, because of that and the way that they're trying to capitalize on it, you'll often find when you go, it's first of all, a really long wait to get seated because they're running behind. But then once you do sit down, it's charge you for the bread basket. And I'm going to get you out of here as quick as I possibly can. Yeah. Final question for you both. What does hospitality mean to you? And is there anyone, it can be a person, a brand that you think has truly mastered it?

35:41Yeah. So Sarah touched on this earlier, but I think we like for us, at least we think about hospitality probably different than like restaurant operators, hotel owners. And it's how do we make the process of getting into the establishment a lot more seamless? That's become a whole thing in itself now. And so it's, you know, improving that if someone has to, you know, work so hard just to get a booking or a reservation somewhere, it kind of ruins the experience before it's even started. In terms of someone, I think Danny Myers articulates this very well with with you know his his whole restaurant group which is hospitality should be about how you make the person feel and that's something that you know sarah and i think about a lot just especially with res x and customer support and and in general like i think it's people don't necessarily remember the small details but they'll always remember you know how they felt when they use your product when they went to that restaurant how they got the reservation yeah i think i don't have one brand for you but to take it slightly differently i think like you've seen this industry breaking in so many ways in terms of inefficiencies around not just restaurant reservations but tickets experiences and i just saw this morning that like for example the new york knicks are going to reserve a like i forget how many but a ton of tickets for underprivileged kids to make sure that they can attend the nba finals you've seen artists recently setting a cap on like what their concert tickets can be resold for.

37:13And I think that consideration for the audience and making sure the access is there for the people who really want to be in those seats and maybe can't afford to be in those seats because of how crazy this world has become. I think that's like really cool and kind of core to the same democratizing access to these great experiences that we're so obsessed with. Mina, Sarah, this has been so much fun. And thank you for inspiring me with what restaurant reservation I need to go get next. And for joining us today, I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Katie. This has been great. All right, everyone.

37:46It's time for today's sweet summary where I break down the key insights and actionable takeaways from today's conversation. In a lot of ways, ResX is a classic founder story. A business born from Mina and Sarah's personal frustrations. Booking a dinner reservation in New York City had become a game that seemed, ahem, reserved for people with the right connections, unlimited flexibility, or the willingness to pay a premium. They wanted to make great dining more accessible and bring spontaneity back to the city. But instead of spending months building an app, hiring expensive consultants, raising venture capital, and hoping they were onto something, they started with the simplest possible version, an Instagram account.

38:33Every reservation request was handled manually by themselves personally, even if that meant sneaking away from their day jobs to hide in a bathroom stall and coordinate reservations in real time. That hands-on approach told them exactly what to build. After countless interactions, they knew exactly which features people wanted, what they'd pay, and which ideas weren't worth pursuing. It also created an incredibly engaged community. By the time they officially launched, they didn't need to convince people to care. Their users were already invested in their success. It also kept them remarkably close to the customer.

39:15They knew which restaurants people were searching for, what neighborhoods were having a moment, what reservations were impossible to get, and what experiences people were willing to rearrange their schedules for. They weren't relying on surveys or market research. They were watching demand unfold in real time. So often, entrepreneurs focus on perfecting the product first and finding the audience later. Mina and Sarah did the opposite. They built the community, proved the demand, and then built the technology. They solved the problem before they ever considered charging for it. Because ResX isn't really about reservations.

39:55It's about access and perhaps making dinner in New York a little more spontaneous again. And that concludes another episode of Sweet Success. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe, rate, and review the show. We all know how important those five-star reviews are. I also want to say a massive thank you to each and every one of you for tuning in. It means the absolute world to me. And I'd love to hear from you. If you have ideas for future guests, new topics to cover, or even just want to say hi, don't be shy. Message me through our website, sweetsuccesspodcast.com or on social media at sweetsuccesspodcast.

40:32That's sweet like hotel suite. Once again, I'm your host, Katie Klein, and I'm super excited to see you all next week. ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.