Popular online restaurant reservation service OpenTable is making a play for the European market with the $55 million acquisition of UK-based TopTable.
TopTable is essentially a European version of OpenTable; it provides online restaurant reservations in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US (only in New York City, though). While OpenTable has operations internationally, it doesn't compare to the 5,000 restaurants TopTable serves in Europe (3,000 of them in the UK).
For $55 million in cash, OpenTable will immediately gain a presence in Europe, one it can quickly leverage to expand into more restaurants internationally. The publicly traded company has been on the rise since February, jumping from a stock price of $25.01 to $62.80 as of market closing today. The restaurant reservation service has also recently integrated with Yelp, launched a group-buying service and debuted an iPad app.
[via GigaOM]