CityEats Takes on OpenTable in Philly

CityEats—an online restaurant reservation service from the Food Network—has launched in Philly and is going toe-to-toe with OpenTable, which has flourished without competition for quite some time. CityEats promises a more intense and complete restaurant profile than OpenTable, including professional photography, videos, and blogs from food writing pros for each entrant on the roster. So far, about 30 restaurants have signed up in Philly, as CityEats quickly expands to other cities (the service started in the Washington, D.C. market, Philly was second in line).

For restaurants, CityEats has designed each profile to be edited and updated from smartphones and iPads for ease of use, and most importantly, each reservation made online will set the restaurant back $0.75 to OpenTable's $1. The gauntlet has been thrown down, OpenTable, how are you going to respond? The good news is that whatever does happen will only be a positive for diners in Philly trying to score that hard-to-come-by seating at 9 P.M. on a Saturday night.

· City Eats: Philly [Official]