Dec. 11--The rush to renew season tickets at Next, the popular West Town restaurant with rotating cuisine themes, had to wait a day after a glitch emerged in Tock's online ticketing service.
Season ticket holders were poised to renew their tickets Wednesday morning, but a "bug" in the system prompted Tock engineers to shut down that option and relaunch it Thursday morning. As of Friday morning, Next season tickets were available to anyone on Tock and will be throughout December, said Nick Kokonas, CEO of Tock and co-owner of Next.
Kokonas chalked it up to a lesson learned for Tock, a restaurant ticketing system launched in June.
"Anytime you're trying to do something new and different, you're going to have some mistakes," Kokonas said Friday morning. "In a way, it's good that it happened to me and our season ticket holders."
Despite the glitch, almost $2 million in season tickets were renewed Thursday, he said. And only the season ticket option for Next was shut down after the bug was discovered; all other Tock services continued to operate normally.
Tock has 51 restaurants in five countries that use its service, and it's on pace to pass 200 restaurants within four months, Kokonas said. Restaurants pay a monthly fee of $695 to book reservations through Tock.
Asked what exactly what went wrong, Kokonas deferred to fellow Tock co-founder and chief technology officer, Brian Fitzpatrick. "How nerdy do you want to get?" Fitzpatrick said.
