How much of a night out can American Express touch before the guest begins to notice?
Pablo Rivero is tucked into a wide booth at Venteux inside Pendry Chicago. It is midmorning, when a hotel restaurant still belongs to breakfast. Guests linger over coffee. Plates move quietly through the room. Their day has not fully claimed them.
Cappuccinos arrive at our table, warm enough to slow the conversation.
That weekend, the James Beard Awards had drawn chefs, drink professionals, operators and hospitality executives to Chicago. Rivero was due at a technical rehearsal after our interview before appearing onstage later that evening. He was overseeing American Express’s effort to connect restaurants, bars and wineries with payments, member benefits and guest data. Yet he spoke about food less like a corporate strategist than someone who first understood its value around his family’s table.
Before the recorder is on, we joke about what to wear to the awards. I tell him I might arrive in a top hat and tails.
“I would love to see that,” he says, pausing mid-sip to make sure I am kidding.
Rivero has a calm, open presence. He does not reach for polished executive language every time a question becomes personal. His answers move from American Express strategy to family memory and back without warning.
Rivero is CEO of Resy and Tock, Senior Vice President and Head of American Express Global Dining. His job puts him in charge of the company’s effort to connect restaurant discovery, reservations, events, guest information, card benefits and payments.
American Express acquired Resy in 2019. In 2024, it completed its $400 million purchase of Tock, adding technology used to manage reservations, tables and events at restaurants, wineries and other hospitality businesses.
This summer, American Express plans to begin bringing Tock venues into Resy. More than 25,000 businesses will eventually become bookable through the combined consumer platform, including over 1,200 wineries. Tock’s restaurant-management software will continue operating as part of the Resy product suite during the transition.
The company has also proposed paying $700 million for TheFork. If the transaction receives regulatory approval, the European platform would add more than 50,000 restaurants in 11 countries and expand the American Express dining network to approximately 75,000 bookable venues.
The numbers establish the scale. Rivero’s harder assignment begins when those different businesses and systems have to work together. He wants the technology to disappear once someone enters the room.
“When did you fall in love with food and drink?” I ask.
“I was born, man,” Rivero says.
At first, it sounds like a line. Then he explains.
How Venezuela Shaped Rivero’s View Of Hospitality
Rivero grew up in Venezuela, where Wednesday after school could mean lunch at his grandmother’s house with aunts, cousins and the comfortable noise of a family that did not need an invitation to gather.
Weekends had the same cadence. His grandfather would finish lunch and immediately ask what they were having for dinner.
Rivero’s mother owned a bakery, and he worked there during summers. He saw the side of food that disappears from dining-room photographs. Ingredients had to be purchased. Products had to be made and sold. Customers had to return.
The bakery introduced him to hospitality as labor and repetition. It also taught him that recognition could have commercial value without feeling transactional. Regular customers came back because they liked what was sold, but also because the people behind the counter knew them.
Rivero returns to that idea of recognition when he talks about restaurant technology. For him, the value is not simply remembering what someone ordered on a previous visit. It is giving the people in the room enough context to understand why the guest came back and what might make the experience feel familiar again.
His own path from Venezuela to American Express was far less direct than his resume now suggests. Rivero joined the company in 2012 as a senior marketing manager in its business-to-business organization. His responsibilities gradually widened, taking him to London for four years and across 27 markets. Work involving airport lounges brought him closer to hospitality, eventually leading to an American Express restaurant project with Daniel Humm and Will Guidara.
Rivero says he pursued assignments before he looked like the obvious choice for them. Getting through the door never ended the pressure. Each new opportunity raised the stakes and required him to prove, again, that he belonged.
It is one reason Rivero calls himself a statistical anomaly.
When I ask what he would tell a seven-year-old Venezuelan child who heard his accent and wanted to follow the same path, his answer is direct.
“You can do it,” he says. “Put in the work. It will be harder. It can be done.”
Rivero’s career has now placed him at the intersection of competing ideas about hospitality. Resy grew by helping diners find sought-after restaurants and operators manage demand. Tock came at the business differently, building tools for tasting rooms, limited inventory, deposits and prepaid experiences. American Express surrounds both with card-member benefits, payment data and customers accustomed to access.
Rivero must connect those systems without forcing restaurants, wineries and bars into the same operating model. A shared platform cannot assume they are selling the same night out.
Why Rivero Believes Resy And Tock Belong Together
Resy and Tock now sit inside the same American Express strategy, but they were built to solve different problems.
Resy helps restaurants manage demand while giving diners a familiar place to search, book and join waitlists. Tock developed around businesses selling something more complicated than a table at a particular time.
A tasting-menu restaurant may need a deposit to protect a limited number of seats. A winery could be balancing private tours, club appointments, walk-in tastings and events across several spaces. A cocktail bar might ticket a guest-bartender night while leaving part of the room available for regular service.
American Express sees an opportunity to connect those capabilities with its payment network and card-member benefits. Its members spent more than $87 billion on dining in the United States in 2024. Restaurants were also the largest travel and entertainment spending category among U.S. Platinum Card members.
Rivero believes the combined network can make it easier for diners to move from discovery to booking while giving operators more control over demand, advance payments and returning-guest information. American Express processes the transaction, learns more about how its members spend and gives them another reason to keep using the card.
That model is relatively straightforward when the product being sold is a dinner reservation. It becomes more difficult when the booking determines how many bottles are opened, how a tasting room is staffed or if a bar can still accommodate the regular who walks in without a reservation.
Rivero says integrating Tock into Resy is what keeps him up at night. He knows the combination only works if the larger audience does not come at the expense of the flexibility operators chose Tock to provide.
Drinks help explain why.
Why Drinks Are The Hardest Test For Tock
A restaurant reservation usually begins with a table and a time. Beverage-led experiences rarely fit that neatly. A winery may be coordinating private tours, club appointments, hosts and visitors who remain well beyond their scheduled tasting. A whiskey dinner commits bottles, kitchen labor and a fixed number of seats before anyone arrives.
Tock built its reputation around those complications. Businesses can require deposits, sell prepaid menus and manage different experiences from the same pool of tables and spaces.
Barn8, the restaurant at Hermitage Farm in Kentucky, uses Tock for its regular dining room, chef’s tasting menu, whiskey tastings and wine-pairing events. Restaurant manager Abby Brown said the business left its previous reservation provider after rising fees and limited controls made the system increasingly difficult to manage.
“The flexibility with Tock has been incredibly nice,” Brown said in a company case study. “There’s just so much more customization.”
According to Tock, Barn8 processed $244,000 in tasting-menu revenue during its first year on the platform and reported a 2.4 percent no-show rate.
The practical benefit becomes clearer in the way the restaurant manages its space. Guests previously had to call to reserve the tasting menu, while standard reservations were handled separately. Staff then assigned the experience manually and had to make sure the same table was not offered twice. Tock allowed Barn8 to sell both types of bookings from the same inventory.
Dinner and whiskey tastings may feel different to the guest, but they create many of the same operating questions. The restaurant needs to know what has been sold, how long the experience will occupy the room and what has already been committed if the customer does not arrive.
Wineries face those questions across a much longer relationship. Tasting rooms and wine clubs account for 72 percent of winery direct-to-consumer performance, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report.
Rivero says wineries will remain central as Tock inventory becomes discoverable through Resy. Resy could introduce those properties to a wider audience, while Tock’s operating tools continue handling the complexity behind each appointment.
The longer-term plan is less defined. American Express intends to combine parts of the restaurant-facing technology, but it has not released a complete schedule for every feature or explained how much of Tock’s identity will remain visible.
Rivero must increase discovery without weakening the controls that made Tock valuable to businesses selling limited, carefully timed experiences.
Tock helps protect what happens before someone arrives. Resy becomes more valuable when the same person decides to return.
How Resy Turns Guest Data Into Recognition
Resy allows restaurants to review previous visits, preferences and staff notes before service. A guest profile may show a favorite table or note that the person usually begins dinner with Champagne. It can also flag dietary information the team should know before the guest arrives.
The information gives staff a head start, but it cannot explain the person’s mood when the door opens.
Grant Gardner saw the limits of those profiles while managing Al Coro, Mel’s and the subterranean cocktail club Discolo in New York. Notes moved across the businesses, helping staff recognize returning guests. A regular at Mel’s might be invited downstairs to continue the evening at Discolo.
“Resy is incredible for providing information in advance, but we also need to physically look up at the guests at the host stand,” Gardner said.
His team reviewed the notes before service, then adjusted them after meeting the person in front of them. Three previous martini orders do not reveal whether a guest wants conversation tonight or ten quiet minutes before dinner.
Rivero views the data as preparation rather than a substitute for judgment. It can spare a returning guest from repeating a dietary restriction and give the staff useful context before the first interaction. The problem begins when last year’s preference is treated as tonight’s decision.
That limitation becomes more consequential as guests move more freely between alcoholic and zero-proof choices. What someone ordered during the last visit may say little about what they want now.
What Changing Drinking Habits Mean For Rivero’s Bet
Rivero is bringing Resy and Tock together as Americans become more selective about when, where and why they drink.
Total U.S. beverage-alcohol volume fell 5 percent in 2025, according to IWSR. Beer and wine each declined 6 percent, while spirits dropped 4 percent. Growth came from smaller corners of the market. Spirits-based RTDs rose 14 percent, and no-alcohol beer increased 15 percent.
Many consumers have not stopped drinking altogether. They are drinking less frequently and ordering fewer drinks when they go out. IWSR found that cost was the most common reason people gave for moderation.
Gallup measures drinking behavior differently, so its findings should not be compared directly with IWSR’s sales data. Its July 2025 survey found that 54 percent of U.S. adults said they consumed alcohol, the lowest share recorded in the organization’s long-running trend.
The two studies point toward a market becoming more deliberate rather than one walking away from drinking culture.
One guest may order a rare bourbon and stop there. Another might begin dinner with a cocktail before switching to a zero-proof pairing. A customer unwilling to commit to a long meal weeks in advance may still buy a ticket for a tasting or cocktail class.
For operators, those choices make demand harder to anticipate. They also place more value on the experience surrounding the drink.
Rivero says younger American Express members continue spending on restaurants and travel, even when they approach alcohol differently from previous generations. Millennials and Gen Z accounted for 75 percent of new U.S. Consumer Gold and Platinum Card acquisitions during the second quarter of 2025, according to American Express.
The company does not need every member to order another round. It needs hospitality businesses to create nights people consider worth leaving home for.
Resy can help them find the table. Tock may give them a reason to reserve the experience before the night begins.
How Amex Turns Dining Access Into Card Value
American Express can offer something a stand-alone reservation company cannot. It can give card members a financial incentive to book within the network.
The U.S. Platinum Card includes up to $400 a year in Resy statement credits, while the Gold Card offers up to $100. Platinum members may also receive access to selected tables through Global Dining Access and Platinum Nights by Resy.
Rivero describes the relationship as a flywheel. A member sees a dining benefit and chooses an eligible restaurant on Resy. The restaurant gains the visit, American Express processes the payment and the experience gives the customer another reason to keep using the card.
As Tock’s inventory becomes easier to discover through Resy, that relationship could extend beyond a conventional dinner reservation. A member might book a winery tasting, purchase a prepaid menu, reserve a whiskey event or secure a place at a limited cocktail experience.
For operators, the advantage is access to customers with a built-in reason to choose a business in the network. The value will depend on whether those visits are genuinely new and whether the platform allows restaurants, bars and wineries to retain control over the relationships that follow.
Rivero’s challenge is not only proving that American Express can bring valuable customers through the door. He must show that the platform can support the relationship without becoming more important than the business that created it.
Why The Tock Integration Will Decide Whether Rivero’s Bet Works
For diners, the promise is convenience. One platform could surface a neighborhood restaurant or bar, a winery appointment, a prepaid tasting menu or a ticketed cocktail experience.
Operators will feel the transition more directly. A winery cannot afford to lose timed appointments during a busy weekend. Prepaid guests cannot disappear between systems after a chef has ordered ingredients and scheduled staff. Cocktail bars still need room for walk-ins, late arrivals and people who decide to stay longer than expected.
Rivero has to preserve the customization Brown valued at Barn8 while making those experiences easier for Resy users to discover. He also wants restaurants to recognize returning guests without letting old notes and spending histories overrule what staff see in front of them.
The software is only one part of what Rivero has to combine. The teams behind Resy, Tock and American Express were built around different expectations of hospitality.
Resy grew around restaurant discovery and consumer demand. Tock focused on inventory, deposits and experiences that often had to be paid for before service. American Express enters through payments, membership benefits and customers accustomed to access.
Rivero now has to decide what each side keeps and where each one changes.
Near the end of our conversation, I ask him to leave the platforms and acquisitions behind. What does he want from his own ideal night out?
After a week of flights, delays and days that have run too long, Rivero wants dinner with his family at a restaurant where they are already known. His children have dishes they look forward to ordering. The welcome feels personal without becoming a performance.
Sometimes, he says, the family is invited into the kitchen to greet the chef.
In his telling, the value is not access to a room other people cannot enter. It is the feeling that someone noticed his family had returned.
For a person building a global dining network, the answer sets a difficult standard. Technology can remind the restaurant when Rivero last visited, retrieve a service note or flag a celebration.
It cannot make anyone care.
Someone still has to look up from the screen and recognize him.
