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Input: I dread many things about dining out in the coming year  from closings of beloved restaurants to ever-weirder ramen mutations. But the scariest of all may be the expansion of the online reservation app Tock  which makes you pay in advance for your meal at the time of booking — mostly at super-luxury eateries  but increasingly at lower-priced places  too.
The great Eleven Madison Park is the only place in Manhattan that currently uses three-year-old Tock for all seatings (though it’s also one of the very few restaurants worth such hassle). In Williamsburg  tiny Aska also uses the app exclusively. Now  Tock — which is used by just 300 US restaurants  compared to 43 000 for OpenTable and 1 000 for Resy — is trying to lure in lesser joints such as Té with Tock Intro.
Backed by millions of dollars in venture-capital funding  Tock promises great things to owners. Its platform can help them better manage reservations and reduce no-shows. Customers supposedly benefit from avoiding the hassles of reserving by phone.
But I hate having to buy a ticket for a meal — even for a world-class place such as Eleven Madison Park or Chicago’s Alinea  which is co-owned by Nick Kokonas  who also happens to be the founder of Tock.
Certain places that use OpenTable or Resy require a $50-a-head credit-card deposit. I’m not crazy about that  but at least we’re not giving them an interest-free loan of nearly $1 200  as a table for four would be at Eleven Madison Park reserved months from now on Tock.
Tock is striving to make inroads here by handling New Year’s Eve bookings at places that would otherwise use OpenTable or Resy. “New Year’s Eve has notoriously high demand and no-show rates  so we’re seeing a large number of restaurants using Tock Intro to combat the no-show issue ” says a company rep.
Among them: The Lambs Club and Lupa Osteria Romana — where you can only book the $275-per-head “Roman feast” starting at 9:45 p.m. on Dec. 31 using  Tock .
 Tock ’s strategy is to persuade users of the limited service to switch to the site full-time.  Tock ’s rep says  “Many restaurants start with  Tock  by offering a single prepaid experience  which is what you’re seeing with Lupa’s NYE dinner. After they see the full platform … they often transition all reservations over to  Tock .”

Restaurants now want you to pay up before you even see a menu