Amex Leverages Resy To Launch VIP Dining Platform
Originally published by Forbes on Jul 1, 2021
Resy's Global Dining Access program launches July 1, 2021. Credit: Resy
The restaurant business isn’t back to normal yet by any stretch, but the dizzying pace of reopenings and ambitious new menus sprouting up across the country are making normal seem both distant and dull.
During the long months of lockdown, some of the world’s best chefs and restaurateurs spent their time reimagining and reinventing what they want their dining experience to be. As of today, Resy and Amex are launching a new digital loyalty program called Global Dining Access (GDA) to get you seated, and spending, at their tables.
“The GDA program delivers exclusive reservations to our top-tier card members. It’s an opportunity to digitally bring the best diners in the world and the best restaurants in the world together,” says Alexander Lee, VP & GM, Resy-American Express Global Dining.
Here’s how it works: If you carry an eligible Amex card (Platinum or Business Platinum and above) linked to your Resy account, you will be automatically opted-in to GDA membership. The key feature is the “Priority Notify” function giving members first dibs on Resy’s network of more than 9,000 restaurants. If a table becomes available, a notification is sent to GDA members before everyone else on the app vying to book Resy’s most-requested hotpots, including Carbone, Via Carota, Lilia, Don Angie, and L'Artusi. (In June, Resy’s top five restaurants had an average of 1,000 customers per day requesting to be notified about table openings.)
Mezcal and Grasshoppers
Another restaurant currently staging its own evolution is Blue Hill at Stone Barns, an 80-acre sustainable plant breeding opus in the Hudson River Valley. Helmed by chef Dan Barber, Blue Hill is known for weaving optimized breeds of vegetables and wheat into elaborate four-hour tasting menus. Before the pandemic, Blue Hill was the white cloth standard for New Yorkers looking to escape the concrete city, retreat to a refurbished barn, and consume small-plate spectacles of nature.
Chef Jorge Vallejo walks with colleagues on the farm at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. Credit: Resy
Now it’s something else. Just beyond the barn, a doe-eyed Mexican named Jorge Vallejo is sweating over a freshly dug fire pit on the farm, roasting a whole pig to celebrate the end of his residency at Blue Hill. He’s the chef and owner of Quintonil in Mexico City, named one of the World’s 50 Best restaurants in 2019. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him. He has no pomp or circumstance. Instead, you see a gentle, contented cook who just proved he can deliver 15 courses of haute-Mexican cuisine made with Westchester county produce — on a nightly basis.
“For him, I thought it would never happen, because he’s actually one of those chefs who cooks every night in his kitchen. He rarely leaves for anything, so to leave for four weeks was unheard of. But he’s very into it, and I got lucky,” said Dan Barber, who whisked by in his kitchen whites to say hello and stepped away just as quickly because he doesn’t want to be seen as running tonight’s show.
Part of the point of Stone Barn Center’s Chef-in-Residency program, as Barber announced in 2020 in response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, is for Barber to step away from the kitchen and hand the reins to an ethnically diverse group of chefs. Thus, after pitmaster Bryan Furman kicked off the program in May, diners got the chance to taste the work of Vallejo, which would otherwise require a flight to Mexico City. Next up, Jonathan Tam takes over, followed by Adrienne Cheatham and Pam Yung.
In between sips of mezcal, I see a glint in Barber’s eyes. He’s not going anywhere. Instead, he’s reveling in the collaboration and the challenge of change swirling like a finely tuned culinary orchestra around him. “We’re switching the kitchen next week into a Cantonese restaurant. It’s really exciting. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before, that’s for sure. I’m planning to do more of it, with a bit of Blue Hill in between. We want to reopen Blue Hill [in Greenwich Village]. That’s what we’re plotting right now.”
Good, we’re glad to hear it. Because Dan Barber isn’t just a chef. He represents and supports environmentally ethical agriculture when our climate faces the consequences of modern industrial food production. But that’s another story…
Vallejo's "La Milpa" dish, including Stone Barns spring vegetables, leche de tigre and epazote. Credit: Resy
With that, we’re back to oohing and aahing over our micheladas — a beer-based take on a bloody mary — mixed tableside, showcasing smoky Oaxacan mezcals and locally brewed beer rimmed with Mexican worm salt. It’s a spicy entrée into a world of Mexican flavors, setting the right tone for a meal that’s going to include grasshopper oil, chicatana ants, and habanero peppers all set to a Spotify playlist celebrating Vallejo’s heritage.
It’s downright delightful to dive into pools of smoky spiced mole and fragrant ceramic pots of chocolate chicatana ant chorizo. But the best thing about this menu is that it dances with every possible iteration of corn. Some chefs can serve you a type of cheese or bread in a way that you’ve never tasted before. With Vallejo, he’s giving you the gift of “milpa.”
It’s an entire agrosystem starring corn, with deep roots in the development of Mayan civilization. In as much as you could possibly get a lesson in the evolution of food domestication with one meal, this is it. As it reads on our custom printed and hand signed menus, milpa is “the place where the knowledge of countless generations of sowers from the Mesoamerican region is concentrated.”
Right Place, Right Time
With the Resy partnership, Amex diners looking to rekindle their love of restaurants are being treated not just to a meal, but to a radical revival of culinary creativity. Blue Hill at Stone Barns is just one such example, and it’s not a coincidence.
It just so happens that the GDA program is launching the same day American Express (Resy’s parent company) is announcing a “refresh” of its Platinum card designed to boost consumer spending. Nonetheless, it’s a nice perk and frankly necessary if you need to justify the $695 annual membership fee. “Amex has always had a bespoke program for their diners. GDA digitally enables that by providing exclusive access to a broader pool of customers,” adds Resy’s Alexander Lee.
This is the latest development in the digital dining trend accelerated by the pandemic, which has restaurants increasingly dependent on technology, including reservation platforms, delivery apps, and dynamic pricing. As a result, Resy, OpenTable, Tock, and SevenRooms are more in demand than ever.
And why not? If you can attract more customers via smartphones using in-app notifications, you’ll win more business. If, like Resy, you can virtually eliminate no-show risk and extend cardmember loyalty for your parent company at the same time — you’ve just hit a jackpot.
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