Young people are desperate to claw their way into the most hard-to-get restaurants—and probably post about it afterward.
That’s good news for American Express, whose gold card, which includes a partnership with reservation platform Resy, is soaring in popularity among its youngest cardholders.
AmEx’s third-quarter report, published Friday, said that in the last three months, fully four in five of customers to open a gold card account were either millennials or Gen Zers.
Not only that: the AmEx gold card—which, unlike its other offerings, comes replete with the Resy perks—had 30% higher uptake than the AmEx platinum, widely considered its best card.
AmEx bought Resy five years ago, and earlier this year bought Tock, a luxury reservation platform originally owned by Squarespace. Both apps are part of AmEx’s strategy of building out dining perks for cardholders—which prove to be enduringly popular.
The cherry on top
On Resy, AmEx cardholders can nab exclusive reservations (held for only AmEx platinum holders), be the first one notified if a table at a hot new bistro opens up, get early access to “special experiences” like chef dinners and cooking classes, and receive a “VIP Diner Badge” that lets restaurants know you’re a “valued guest.” Perhaps the Gold card represents a stepping stone for young people hoping to one day snag the perks available to platinum holders, with a $100 annual Resy credit and $120 in annual dining credits at Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, and Five Guys.
To boot, the Resy perk is proving popular with its youngest customers: “The new benefits and capabilities we have added in popular categories like dining are fueling our growth with millennial and Gen Z consumers, who represent 80 percent of the new accounts acquired on the U.S. Consumer Gold Card, and remain our fastest growing consumer cohort overall in the U.S.,” AmEx CEO Stephen Squeri wrote in the earnings report.
Squeri added that the early popularity of the new gold card “reinforces my confidence that we’re investing in the right areas to enhance our value propositions and meet the financial and lifestyle needs of our customers.”
Plus, despite receiving repeated flack for being fickle customers, AmEx’s youngest consumers are actually their most loyal: Gen Z and millennial consumers comprise one-third of all AmEx customer spending, and their transaction rate was up 12% this quarter, compared with Gen X’s, which only grew 6%, and that of baby boomers, which remained flat.
Shiny and new
The gold card got a refresh earlier this summer—its first since 2018. As of July, the annual fee for the gold card was raised 30%, from $250 to $325. Clearly, that $75 jump wasn’t enough to dissuade even the famously spendthrifty younger consumers.
The gold card also has a new dining cap, meaning that cardholders can only earn four points per dollar on restaurants up to $50,000; after that, it drops to only one point per dollar. Also new to the card are up to $84 in credits for Dunkin’.
Millennials and Gen Zers pay for restaurant meals with their AmEx card twice as much as other generations do, Squeri said on the earnings call last week.
“We know that millennials and Gen Zs are especially interested in dining. In fact, these younger card members transact almost two times more on dining and make up a higher percentage of users on our Resy restaurant booking platform than other generations in our card member base.” Squeri said.
“With that in mind, we enhance the already rich dining benefits that come with Gold Card membership, and as we've done with other refreshes, the value of the additional benefits is greater than the annual fee increase.”
And while it doesn’t taste as good as a $50 viral cheeseburger, new cardholders can also—in their application—request a white-gold- or rose-gold-colored card.
Gen Z loves restaurants—restaurants don’t love them back
In his final dispatch for the New York Times, its restaurant critic of a dozen years, Pete Wells, decried the impact of reservation apps like Resy—and its partnership with AmEx—on the dining experience. Namely: It has made it incalculably worse and markedly less human.
“Online reservations are easier on the ego, because they free us from the humiliation of being told no. Mainly, though, we like their convenience, which in the United States is virtually an inalienable right,” Wells wrote.
“We know that we might not be offered the same reservation times as somebody with a higher tier of American Express membership.”
October 22, 2024: This story has been clarified to state that only AmEx platinum holders can access exclusive dinner reservations through the Global Dining Access program.
