From McKinsey and Uber to NZ’s First Table: Alex Cappy to take restaurant platform global
Sunday, 31 May 2026
Alex Cappy has had a life of travel and work many people this side of the world can only dream about.
Born in Kentucky to an Italian father, Cappy has spent much of her life and corporate career in the US and Europe.
Summers in Florence growing up were the normal for the career CEO, and she spent her early professional career in consulting working between Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York, later relocating to Europe where she found her speciality in food and delivery.
Cappy was one of Uber’s earliest international employees, charged with growing a market in Britain, and was former head of supply operations at food delivery platform Deliveroo, before relocating to New Zealand from Amsterdam in 2023.
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A connection with tech investor Altered Capital saw her up sticks and move with her two young children and Kiwi husband to Auckland, and two years after taking Kiwi smart electricity switch board firm Basis global, she has signed up to do the same with First Table.
Five weeks into the job as chief executive of the restaurant booking discount platform, Cappy says she is motivated to see the business establish itself in markets and continents she has a history with.
She came into a capital raise, with the company close to completing its $10 million capital drive to foot its international plans.
Already operating in the UK, Belfast and Australia, South Island-based First Table is gearing up to kick off its next wave of international expansion, and is soon to launch into Dublin. Cappy is tight-lipped on other markets the company is eyeing.
First Table was founded by Queenstown developer Mat Weir 12 years ago, and bootstrapped for its first nine years. A coder and entrepreneur, Weir stumbled across the idea for First Table at a French restaurant in Queenstown that offered something only locals knew about ‒ a 50% off discount to dine at certain times, with a proviso that they had to sit at a certain table.
Cappy explains the origin story: “It was a French restaurant that had one table downstairs and the rest of the tables upstairs … it had a ‘locals’ deal ‒ you had to know about it, you had to ask for it ‒ but the first table of the night, [a] downstairs table that people could see, was 50% off food, not drinks. It was an insider scoop kind of thing, and so [Weir] and his family ended up going there a bunch.
“It encouraged him to try things that he wouldn't have tried at full price, like frog legs and escargot. He was intrigued by that dynamic: The owners knew that if they had bodies in that seat it could drive traffic and pull people in,” explains Cappy.
“Matt being a developer, decided to build a [system] ‒ he then… took it on the road, on-boarding restaurants across New Zealand, basically living on couches and in hotels for a while, then launched in Australia shortly afterwards.”
Weir has remained in the business following Cappy’s appointment, and will move into an undecided role focused on AI and product.
Meanwhile, the company has continued to expand, and made revenue of $16m in the last financial year.
Its primary focus now is the British market, which it first entered in 2018 and where First Table revenues grew 160% in the last year.
Cappy will travel to the UK in early June.
“Part of me being hired into this role is because I come from a UK marketplace background,” she says.
“I've also lived in Italy and the Netherlands. I've run teams and businesses across all of Western Europe, so I've got a hit list for the future new cities.”
There are other growth possibilities ‒ like the branding of participating restaurants, similar to how venues have stickers displayed saying ‘Available on Uber Eats’, and the chance to offer “first” bookings to parties of up to six people on the platform.
“Our stronghold historically has been two to four people, that's a nice and easy table size for restaurants, so it means people will be able to use it, for more occasions,” says the 43-year-old.
Just over 4300 restaurants are currently on the platform. About 1400 of those are based in New Zealand, most in Auckland.
Across all markets, First Table has 3.3 million diners on the platform, and seats over 10,000 diners daily.
It had its busiest night ever in Auckland in April, with more than 1000 bookings on a single a day.
First Table employs 65 people so far and aims to have 100 by next year.
“What I love about our product is that we're building a marketplace that's win, win, win. The restaurant wins. The diner wins. First Table, hopefully wins too, and that's what I love about marketplaces in general, you can just solve problems on both sides,” Cappy says.
“Dining is our sweet spot, and it’s the thing we’re passionate about. We're passionate about restaurants, tourism and hospitality, and so while you could go into salons or other things, I expect us to stay close to food.
“We're also really passionate about the discovery side of food; being the first place that you go to experience something new or something different.”
While the job is a busy one with lots of travel, Cappy ‒ a mother of two ‒ helps balance her work-life with home baking and cooking, and her other passion: creating.
She loves to sew, paint and often upcycles and makes her own clothes.
Cappy loves giving her children a “Kiwi experience”, but she is a citizen of the world. Born in the US, she lived most of her teens in Florence then returned to the United States for university.
She spent her 20s and the start of her career in the US, and completed her undergraduate degree in economics and psychology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and a MBA at The Wharton School in Philadelphia.
She worked for four years, between undergraduate studies and business school, as a supply chain analyst in DC, and then joined McKinsey after business school.
At McKinsey she was a management consultant, working in New York, London and Amsterdam, for four years across two stints.
“I never intended to be a management consultant forever so when I was in London, that's the point at which I left consulting and went to Uber as a very early international employee there. Uber was, at that stage, quite mature in the US, but pretty nascent internationally and so we led the amazing growth curve there.”
She then hopped across to Deliveroo at a time when Uber was thinking about launching its Uber Eats business there, and later became general manager of about nine countries for bike sharing company Ofo, spending a lot of time in Berlin and the Nordic countries,
She lived five years in the UK, followed by five years in Amsterdam, where her two children were born.
Describing the move to New Zealand, she says: “The first year is a real honeymoon period because it's such an amazing place, and it's so comfortable … it's just gorgeous. The sound of the birds sounds fake when you haven't lived with it.
“And then you start to be like, ‘Oh God, things are really far [away]’.”