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The Power List 2016: Nick KokonasThe Power List 2016: Nick Kokonas

NRN presents The Power List 2016, our third annual list of the most powerful people in foodservice. The Groundbreakers on the list are writing their own rules and questioning business as usual.

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

January 19, 2016

2 Min Read
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Nick Kokonas, Founder and CEO, Tock.

If you have tickets to a concert or sporting event, and you decide not to go at the last minute, that’s your problem. You bought the tickets; you eat the cost.

Restaurants don’t normally have the luxury that those event venues do, and yet a restaurant meal is also an event, usually with a lot less seating than a concert hall, let alone a stadium. Because of that, no-shows are a real threat to profitability, especially at small, high-end restaurants.  

Nick Kokonas knows that. He’s the co-owner of three avant-garde venues in Chicago: Alinea, Next and The Aviary. Each seat in those spaces is precious, with Alinea meals starting at $210 per person and Next starting at $305.

So Kokonas founded Tock, an online reservation system that not only allows for advance ticket sales, but that also attempts to change the way guests look at a night in a restaurant.

Tock presents restaurant reservations as events: Guests at The Aviary, for example, have booking options that include a five-course cocktail tasting with paired food for $135 per person and a 3-course “cocktail progression” for $65. Guests pay when they book, with tax and tip included, just as if they were buying an airline ticket. Other restaurants, such as Journeyman, a Tock user in Somerville, Mass., use the service to book conventional reservations, with the option of a $10 to $20 discount for guests who pay in advance.

Just as in the airline industry, restaurateurs can vary the pricing at different times of day or days of the week.

Tock is catching on, especially at high-end restaurants such as Coi in San Francisco, Qui in Austin, Texas, and Trois Mec in Los Angeles, paving the way for a new approach to eating out.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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