The company was founded by Chuck Templeton in San Francisco, California, in 1998. Reservations are free to end users; the company charges restaurants monthly and per-reservation fees for their use of the system.
In 1999, the website began operations serving a limited selection of restaurants in San Francisco.[4] It has since expanded to cover more than 30,000[5] restaurants in most U.S. states as well as in several major international cities. Reservations can be made online through its website.
On June 13, 2014 the company announced it had agreed to terms with Priceline.com for that company to acquire OpenTable in a full cash deal worth $2.6 billion.