24 ms·

New York restaurants fight back against reservations by bots

174 points by lxm 3y ago

karaterobot 3y ago
This doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem, they'd just have to bite one of a number of bullets to verify that the person who made the reservation is the person who showed up to the restaurant: restaurants insisting on strict identity verification for the reservation systems they use, or a rule that says the name on your credit card or driver's license must match the name of the person who made the reservation in order to be seated. People would naturally complain, but if the reservations are going for up to $300, I assume the restaurants have some leverage. Or just go back to telephone reservations. If you hear the same voice calling over and over, you tell them there aren't any more reservations available. Imperfect, yes, but cheap.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  they'd just have to bite one of a number of bullets to verify that the person who made the reservation is the person who showed up to the restaurant Once someone shows up for a reservation, it's too late to really do anything about it. No restaurant is going to turn away money like that. Popular enough spots may have a line at the door, but you also don't want to risk a commotion turning away hungry people with money and some evidence of a reservation. Plus, fine dining places like some of these are as much about the atmosphere and service as the meal. Being treated with such suspicion would put a bad taste in my mouth before my first bite of food...
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    I can see that argument. If it wrecks these reservation scammers, it'd be better in the long run. But maybe restaurants aren't in the position (or of the mindset) to play a game of chicken like that (chicken is no game at a restaurant...) But in general, the restaurants which are most affected by this scheme are the ones who are likely in the best position to do something about it. They may lose some customers who bought fraudulent reservations, which seems like not much of a loss. They may also lose some people who get mad about being questioned. But, in the long run, I think they'd win more fans among people who couldn't go to the restaurant at all when all the reservations were scooped up by bots.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
      Exactly. It almost feels like a non problem. You only have this problem when your restaurant is in such high demand that it’s worthwhile to be targeted by bots. If your restaurant is in such high demand, you have several tools at your disposal and the wherewithal to police reservations much more than some other less in demand restaurant. But those less in demand restaurants will never have this problem in the first place. And like you said, if you’re that in demand, you can afford to lose a few customers
      - autoexec 3y ago
        > . You only have this problem when your restaurant is in such high demand that it’s worthwhile to be targeted by bots. Why wouldn't bots buy up every table in every restaurant everywhere no matter how busy they normally are? It costs basically nothing. That way you'll be forced to pay money to some app just to get a table anywhere. Restaurants that don't want to be exploited this way will have to either stop accepting reservations or spend a bunch of time and money fighting bots.
        SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        No incentive to do so? I can’t speak to the motivations or lack thereof, I can only say (as someone who eats out fairly frequently) that this is a non issue for all but the most in demand restaurants. In my metro area of 1.2 million I can count the restaurants that have had issues with this on one hand.
dfxm12 3y ago
Instead of relying on these services like Resy, these places can go back to having to call for a reservation. I'm not a restaurant owner, so I'm sure what this tradeoff entails. You can also charge for a reservation, but not every place will be able to get away with that, as it will turn off legitimate diners, too.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  Or just literally charge a deposit for the reservation. Restaurant owners are loathe to do this due to fear that it will drive away customers but if you are a restaurant where bots are a problem in the first place like the subject matter then you certainly have enough demand to justify doing so. The most in demand (eg Michelin star) restaurants already mostly do this
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    What do you mean "or"? Did you read my comment? :)
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I wonder if they interpreted your “charge” as more like a surcharge or fee, rather than a deposit.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    The system of reservations with no cost or cancellation fee actually seems like it ought to provide more-or-less no signal, come to think of it.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - euroderf 3y ago
    I'd think that a modest fee (like, five bucks ?) would filter out most of the robononsense.
crazygringo 3y ago
I've never understood why restaurants themselves don't charge for prime-time reservations. If scalpers can do it, the restaurant can too. Because let's be honest -- dining at certain highly exclusive restaurants on a Friday night is just as much of an event as going to the theater. These aren't neighborhood restaurants with average food that are meant for locals that we're talking about here. These are fancy. If you want to eat at 7 pm on Friday, why shouldn't it be more expensive than Tuesday at 5 pm? And if restaurant owners don't want to take advantage, they can always offset it by lowering the food and drink prices slightly the whole week long. (Not that they're obligated to -- making a profit is already hard enough as is.)
- richiebful1 3y ago
  I've been to a restaurant that already does this: pay $X a head, with that dollar amount applied to your bill. I want to say one of the big restaurant POS providers (maybe Toast) provided the infrastructure behind it.
  - jahnu 3y ago
    I read POS as something angry before I read Point Of Sale!
    - hooverd 3y ago
      If you've worked food service or retail those are interchangeable.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    > with that dollar amount applied to your bill that's smart, that way you get tricked into including yet another line item in your tip
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      They mean the deposit to reserve goes toward purchasing whatever you buy to eat.
fwungy 3y ago
Charge a reservation fee that is can be refunded as a credit that can only be used at the restaurant. It will be deducted from your bill or can be used at a later date. Real customers won't object to that.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  OpenTable does this. It’s easy and a great suggestion.
- fvrghl 3y ago
  That fee would just be passed from the scalper to the buyer of the reservation.
  - fwungy 3y ago
    Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues. The scalper also has to front the money and eat the cost of unsold reservations.
    - greiskul 3y ago
      > Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues. Not really. Restaurant charges 50 dollars for reservation, which gets added as credit at bill. Scalper pays the 50 dollars and charges customer 60 dollars for the reservation. Customer gets the 50 dollars from the restaurant. Scalper keeps the 10 dollars of profit. No rebate is needed for the scalper, they already took the customer money with the deposit included. Now, for unsold reservations, yes, it helps by adding some risk to the scalper.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Lots of places do this. At Birdsong you pay for your table and then if you’ve ordered the pairing with the tasting menu and nothing optional it’s a very “sit down, eat, visit the place, leave” experience. Honestly, makes the place feel luxury. Well, it is luxury and the food is great but it makes you feel royal.
PM_me_your_math 3y ago
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MrThoughtful 3y ago
Are there others like me, who never reserve a table at a restaurant? I find it much more fun to meet friends at a restaurant without a reservation. Less obligation to follow through. If one of us has a last minute idea to do something else, we go with the flow. If none of the available tables are to our liking, we go with the flow and go elsewhere. If there is no available table, we go with the flow and go elsewhere. So much more serendipity and freedom. One time, we arrived at a restaurant and were told that there is no available table. Since I just read in a book that you usually can bribe the waiter, I jumped over my shadow, said "Maybe we can wait a few minutes and see if something becomes available?" and put a €20 note into the hand of the waiter. Pointed at the best table at the window and said "That one would be perfect of course". 5 minutes later, we were sitting at the table at the window. I was a nerve wreck and felt like a king :)
- deleted 3y ago
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- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Good tip about bribing the host, never tried that I would say you are missing out on very good experiences by doing noncommittal things with noncommittal friends
  - MrThoughtful 3y ago
    That could very well be. On the other hand, I feel like others are missing out on those moments where one of my friends calls and says "Hey I'm in this and that part of the city and I'm hungry. What do you do?". And I'm like "I'm sitting in a cafe in that other part, drinking coffee, tinkering on my laptop. How about we meet in 30 minutes in this and that restaurant?". And they are like "Deal. I also have my laptop with me. Have you seen the new OpenAI API? I just cobbled something together with it that I would like to show you.". Most people seem too entangled in job and family for this.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      people that reserve at restaurants also do what you just described this has nothing to do with the crowd that is entangled in job and family?
runarb 3y ago
https://archive.is/pVN3I https://archive.is/pVN3I
forthwall 3y ago
I wonder if this can be resolved with: * Real names on restaurant, just verify their ID. Then ban them from opentable/resy (might be harsh, but will disincentivize behavior) * No transferring reservations, if rez is cancelled, hold the rez and release at a random time later I know for ticketmaster, they have no incentive to put these guards up because they take a % cut for every resale, but for these apps; I think you can put some reasonable defenses, especially since most of the restaurants that face these issues have bills of a few hundred dollars anyway.
- justinlkarr 3y ago
  As other commenters have shared, there are big disincentives for restaurants to turn people away at the door - they don't get paid, and it is negative experience for both sides (with commensurate brand effects). Bulk-generating accounts -- email addresses, phone numbers and even credit card numbers -- is a solved problem for resellers. In New York State, it is illegal to restrict transfer of tickets. Expect the same for reservations as this battle advances.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Wow, TIL. Do you know why that's the case? It sucks being able to not resell a ticket when plans change, but I'd assume that these days, the convenience of being able to do that is more than offset by the amount lost to scalpers.
    - justinlkarr 3y ago
      From the National Association of Ticket Brokers (the lobbying arm of the ticket reseller industry): https://www.protectticketrights.com/news/86/PRESS+RELEASE+NY+State+Continues+to+Protect+Ticketholders+Ability+to+Freely+Transfer+Tickets https://www.protectticketrights.com/news/86/PRESS+RELEASE+NY... (This is not my personal perspective.)
  - rhizome 3y ago
    Bulk generating credit card numbers that can be charged a reservation fee?
justinlkarr 3y ago
From your friends in event ticketing: welcome to the struggle, and we're sorry. I hope Resy figures this out, and I hope we're able to learn from (or license) their solution. I expect their approach will look similar to our path: fight the secondary market with every legal tool, work with them when you can't, improve pricing algorithms to reduce arbitrage opportunity. Customers on both sides of their market will probably be frustrated with each effort. They want to cook and eat, not "be in a marketplace". They will probably blame Resy. The secondary market will probably engage legislative resources, attempting to tailor the law to protect their practices. They will probably do this "in the interest of diners". It will probably become illegal to restrict transfer of reservations, among other things. Good luck y'all. Reach out if you need support. Love, Broadway
- standardUser 3y ago
  The ticketing industry could completely stop reselling if they wanted to. Require the person who purchases the tickets to be the person who uses the ticket. No transferring, no reselling. But companies would lose out on all that sweet scalper cash, plus they would have to have a virtually unlimited refund policy to deal with legitimately unneeded tickets. I always figured that one-two punch of revenue loss is what prevents ticketing companies from saving us from this hell they've created.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Banning resales is illegal in some places! But then again, e.g. in New York, it's apparently also illegal to resell a ticket for more than 10% above its face value, yet ticket scalping does not seem to be a solved problem...
    - justinlkarr 3y ago
      True on 1 but not on 2. There is no longer a limit on the amount you can resell a ticket for in NYS. see NYS ACA 11-C, Title G, 25.30(c): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30
  - 3y ago
pradn 3y ago
There's an app called Dorsia, which lets you purchase seats at sought-after restaurants. The purchase is usually in the form of a per-seat minimum spend. They start at $75 per seat, but some go into the hundreds. This app solves a few problems at once: customers get to buy their way out of the seat-scouting process (keenly watching the apps for open reservations, walking in and putting their name on the waitlist, bribing the host, knowing someone with pull, etc), restaurants guarantee some of their seats go to high-spending clients (you could walk out with spending $35 at a good number of these spots), and companies have something to offer to their customers as a perk - Dorsia membership (the fancy gym chain Equinox gives their customers Dorsia access, for example). None of this is democratic, but that's the nature of luxury. https://www.dorsia.com/ https://www.dorsia.com/
- renewiltord 3y ago
  That’s pretty cool. If it were an auction it could do price discovery even better.
- well_actulily 3y ago
  Jesus. Dorsia? On a Friday night?
  - gosub100 3y ago
    I wondered about this, or Big Kahuna Burger. Can someone trademark the brand if the brand appeared in the movie first?
  - SCUSKU 3y ago
    Great movie, never gets old
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  every time i heard about this app, i thought it was a prank, because i saw the movie
  - pradn 3y ago
grumple 3y ago
High end restaurants in my city and a few European cities I've been to recently required reservations with payment up front. At worst, the restaurant still gets the money if someone (like a bot account) no shows. This would be a pretty high risk endeavor to use a bot to reserve at these restaurants. Maybe restaurants should go back to requiring reservations over the phone or in person. Or require an ID to match the name on the reservation.
- kristjansson 3y ago
  Starts to look like the venue-artist-scalper relationship. The provider gets to hand off some of the risk in exchange for the peaks of profit.
- grork 3y ago
  I did a two week trip in the UK recently, and over the ~8 restaurants we ate at, 7 required credit card to reserve, with a specific fee that would be applied if no-show
jrockway 3y ago
So, there are a lot of comments saying that reservations should charge an up-front fee and apply that to the food, but I don't think that will work. First off, plenty of restaurants in New York do that and the problem persists. The underlying problem is that with scalpers buying reservations, they are proving that the market will bear a higher price. People that buy scalped reservations are paying the scalper a fee which WILL NOT be applied to their bill. That means the restaurant is undercharging. The solution to this problem is to handle restaurant reservations like airline reservations. They check your ID before you can board the plane. No reason that restaurants can't do the same. People would be mad, of course, but that's the only way you can prevent a secondary market from setting the price. (They should do this for concert tickets and things like that as well. Artists intentionally sell tickets below market price so that their fans don't get mad at them, but economics simply doesn't all this to exist; someone will always step in to take the profit that you left on the table. By requiring ID, you can prevent the market from stepping in, because the pool of buyers goes down; only people that can get a government ID with your name on it can buy your ticket on the secondary market. John Smith is probably out of luck, but everyone else is fin.) Overall, I don't think the restaurants have a particularly strong incentive to solve this problem. At the end of the day, they are made or broken based on filling up their tables. They do fill all their tables with the current system. So the next remaining hurdle is increasing "fairness". There isn't a way to do this without annoying someone. If they check IDs, someone will be mad that they had their ID checked. If they charge an entrance fee (i.e. a cost for the reservation that isn't applied to your meal), then someone is going to be mad. (The staff will also probably be mad; if you pay $100 for your seat, that's $100 less to tip with.) At the end of the day, I think charging market price on everything is the most fair. If people will pay $100 just to get in the door, they should take the $100. I would definitely pay it for special occasions; you can do it 6 times a year and still pay less than the annual fee on your Amex Plat card!
- taurusnoises 3y ago
  Seems to me the real fix is to take reservations over the phone, not rely on apps and intermediaries to handle stuff that can easily be handled by humans, and move on.
hn72774 3y ago
> It also sparked the idea of adding the admission charge to the food bill, so customers would not be asked for money at the door. (In his early years, Dimitriou had encountered profound resistance to a cover charge and he often operated Jazz Alley without one, feeling it set the wrong tone for the kind of fine dining establishment he was trying to create.) It worked, and music lovers in general began to view the club as an upscale destination for special occasions. By 2015, the Alley was taking in more than $3 million in admissions. This is about Jazz Alley, in Seattle WA. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/how-seattles-jazz-alley-now-43-became-a-premier-destination/ https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/how-seattle...
alexpotato 3y ago
I remember a popular restaurant in NYC in the late 2000's had a "in person request for reservation only" policy. The thought was that if you lived in the neighborhood, you would walk down to the restaurant around 4pm, make your reservation, go home and then come back for dinner. In practice, this meant that if you wanted a spontaneous "let's go eat there" type of evening and you didn't live in the neighborhood, you wouldn't be eating dinner till after midnight.
mettamage 3y ago
Wait, is this even legal? I made a bot one time for a group of people I know to go to Noma. They invited me to come with them out of gratitude. They told me I could resell that. Other than personally finding it unethical, I also thought it'd be illegal to do so. In any case, writing such a bot for a one time use-case (and just one reservation of which I was a part of) was fun!
tlonny 3y ago
On the subject of scalping, I've never understood why tickets can't be bound to a particular identity. I.e. if you buy tickets as "John Smith", only someone who can prove they are "John Smith" is let through the door. In my head, this completely decapitates scalping as a business. Why can't this also be applied in other sectors (i.e. restaurant reservations)
- lxgr 3y ago
  In quite a few countries (most notably and possibly surprisingly including the US), government identity is not that easy to come by and/or controversial in some way. In places/contexts that do have functioning identity ecosystems, that does indeed solve the issue, yes. For example,this is why airline ticket scalpers are not a thing in the US: TSA will validate every passenger's ID matching their boarding pass before being allowed into the airport.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    The US is quite an odd beast when it comes to ID, but as far as I understand, not having a government ID at all is mostly a problem with the lower socioeconomic classes. I don't think the people who put down $100 for a reservation will have quite the same problem. Even if government ID is out of the question, asking for a credit card with the same name should also work as an alternative for those without a drivers' license or any other form of ID. I don't have any numbers of course, but I suspect there's not a lot of overlap between the groups of people who don't have credit cards or ID and the people who go to these expensive restaurants. Many other countries (and private airlines) will match your ID with your boarding pass; however, airlines often allow you to change the details on the boarding pass up to the very end, sometimes for a small fee. When the scalpers' customers go through security, their boarding passes match their government ID. If airlines wouldn't allow you to change the name on your ticket the day before your flight, scalpers would probably lose a lot of business, at the cost of minor inconvenience to customers.
- cogman10 3y ago
  The issue with scalping is it generally doesn't harm the business. To them, a ticket is a ticket and "Oh shucks, sorry you didn't get the one you wanted". Similar to how hoarding goods during a crisis works. So, to answer your question, companies could solve this problem by binding a reservation to an ID. However, there's very little incentive to do that. There's also a slight downside when people show up and say "Oh, forgot my ID". Now you have a fight at the entrance you don't want to deal with.
mmanfrin 3y ago
I worked at OpenTable and this was a problem we also encountered, and it was one of my own projects that was an attempt to combat this. This is one of those posts where I feel like I might actually be an expert but I also feel I can't really talk about specifics of projects for fomer employers :(
standardUser 3y ago
I don't dine at places expensive enough to have encountered this issue. But I do like to dine frequently at high-demand restaurants. The issue I've noticed in NY is that the online reservation platforms have made it trivial for restaurants to require a credit card and charge massive cancellation fees. I've seen mid-range places with $50 fees per person if the reservation is cancelled with less than 24 hours notice. The solution to the above shitshow is the same as the solution to these scalpers. The telephone. Few places will collect your credit card information over the phone for a reservation. And places dealing with scalpers can take names and inform guests that they will need to present ID on arrival. Not an entirely frictionless solution, but I think most people won't mind showing their ID if they are given advanced notice.
- uniformlyrandom 3y ago
  > The telephone. Like a thing you talk into? Why would anyone in 2023 use one?
  - lessbergstein 3y ago
    for restaurant reservations
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    1) Emergency services. 2) When tapping on a screen just gets too much, and the info needs to be info'd fastly.
- orf 3y ago
  Why would anyone give credit card numbers over the phone. That’s nuts. Just require the same payment card is used for the food as to make the booking.
- paxys 3y ago
  How is telephone calls a solution? Scalpers can easily outsource it to some call center abroad (which they already do for all other types of scams), while legitimate customers now have it much harder.
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m3kw9 3y ago
We should all fight back against tipping
duxup 3y ago
Just take a name and note that you have you present ID / no transfers allowed …?
matteoraso 3y ago
I want to say that you can easily solve the problem by requiring a phone call, but with audio deepfakes, that might actually be really easy to circumvent with automated chatbots.
analog31 3y ago
I predict the enshittification of restaurant dining. My hunch is that turning restaurant reservations into a speculative bidding market will not make it better for restaurants on average, but will just extract value while making the business more volatile, and also less pleasant for the average customer.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  Are tips included (before - enshittification: after - free choice(.
tcherasaro 3y ago
This article is certainly making the rounds. I tried to google the title in firefox focus as I sometimes do to get around the paywall and found a weird youtube video of someone sleepily reading the article: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wF_nne164 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wF_nne164 Lots of syndication in the serp also.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
The problem is why people are willing to spend like crazy. Before pandemic most of restaurants are not that hard to reserve.
CraigRo 3y ago
What I don't understand is why you can't require the holder of the reservation to show up or lose it. Destroys the incentive to resell it
pknerd 3y ago
Don't get why articles behind the paywall are referred here
youcantcook 3y ago
A bunch of tech people talking about monetizing the food industry genuinely makes me want to kill myself.
SergeAx 3y ago
Before the escalation of the Russian-Ukranian war in 2022, the Moscow and St.Petersburg restaurant scene was quite vibrant. Some places were challenging to book, etc. These were their ideas for making reservations still accessible: + Accept reservations by phone or in person only and ask for the patron's phone number. Then call back 1 hour before to confirm the reservation. + Make the most popular times non-bookable. You have to come in person and check how many guests are in a queue and how long you should wait for the table. Some people are okay to wait at the bar, others will head to less busy places. +++ Open a spin-off of a popular place, and redirect the clients' stream there.

174 points by lxm 3y ago

This doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem, they'd just have to bite one of a number of bullets to verify that the person who made the reservation is the person who showed up to the restaurant: restaurants insisting on strict identity verification for the reservation systems they use, or a rule that says the name on your credit card or driver's license must match the name of the person who made the reservation in order to be seated. People would naturally complain, but if the reservations are going for up to $300, I assume the restaurants have some leverage. Or just go back to telephone reservations. If you hear the same voice calling over and over, you tell them there aren't any more reservations available. Imperfect, yes, but cheap.

dfxm12 3y ago
they'd just have to bite one of a number of bullets to verify that the person who made the reservation is the person who showed up to the restaurant Once someone shows up for a reservation, it's too late to really do anything about it. No restaurant is going to turn away money like that. Popular enough spots may have a line at the door, but you also don't want to risk a commotion turning away hungry people with money and some evidence of a reservation. Plus, fine dining places like some of these are as much about the atmosphere and service as the meal. Being treated with such suspicion would put a bad taste in my mouth before my first bite of food...
- karaterobot 3y ago
  I can see that argument. If it wrecks these reservation scammers, it'd be better in the long run. But maybe restaurants aren't in the position (or of the mindset) to play a game of chicken like that (chicken is no game at a restaurant...) But in general, the restaurants which are most affected by this scheme are the ones who are likely in the best position to do something about it. They may lose some customers who bought fraudulent reservations, which seems like not much of a loss. They may also lose some people who get mad about being questioned. But, in the long run, I think they'd win more fans among people who couldn't go to the restaurant at all when all the reservations were scooped up by bots.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
    Exactly. It almost feels like a non problem. You only have this problem when your restaurant is in such high demand that it’s worthwhile to be targeted by bots. If your restaurant is in such high demand, you have several tools at your disposal and the wherewithal to police reservations much more than some other less in demand restaurant. But those less in demand restaurants will never have this problem in the first place. And like you said, if you’re that in demand, you can afford to lose a few customers
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > . You only have this problem when your restaurant is in such high demand that it’s worthwhile to be targeted by bots. Why wouldn't bots buy up every table in every restaurant everywhere no matter how busy they normally are? It costs basically nothing. That way you'll be forced to pay money to some app just to get a table anywhere. Restaurants that don't want to be exploited this way will have to either stop accepting reservations or spend a bunch of time and money fighting bots.
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        No incentive to do so? I can’t speak to the motivations or lack thereof, I can only say (as someone who eats out fairly frequently) that this is a non issue for all but the most in demand restaurants. In my metro area of 1.2 million I can count the restaurants that have had issues with this on one hand.

dfxm12 3y ago

Instead of relying on these services like Resy, these places can go back to having to call for a reservation. I'm not a restaurant owner, so I'm sure what this tradeoff entails. You can also charge for a reservation, but not every place will be able to get away with that, as it will turn off legitimate diners, too.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
Or just literally charge a deposit for the reservation. Restaurant owners are loathe to do this due to fear that it will drive away customers but if you are a restaurant where bots are a problem in the first place like the subject matter then you certainly have enough demand to justify doing so. The most in demand (eg Michelin star) restaurants already mostly do this
- dfxm12 3y ago
  What do you mean "or"? Did you read my comment? :)
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I wonder if they interpreted your “charge” as more like a surcharge or fee, rather than a deposit.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  The system of reservations with no cost or cancellation fee actually seems like it ought to provide more-or-less no signal, come to think of it.
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- euroderf 3y ago
  I'd think that a modest fee (like, five bucks ?) would filter out most of the robononsense.

crazygringo 3y ago

I've never understood why restaurants themselves don't charge for prime-time reservations. If scalpers can do it, the restaurant can too. Because let's be honest -- dining at certain highly exclusive restaurants on a Friday night is just as much of an event as going to the theater. These aren't neighborhood restaurants with average food that are meant for locals that we're talking about here. These are fancy. If you want to eat at 7 pm on Friday, why shouldn't it be more expensive than Tuesday at 5 pm? And if restaurant owners don't want to take advantage, they can always offset it by lowering the food and drink prices slightly the whole week long. (Not that they're obligated to -- making a profit is already hard enough as is.)

richiebful1 3y ago
I've been to a restaurant that already does this: pay $X a head, with that dollar amount applied to your bill. I want to say one of the big restaurant POS providers (maybe Toast) provided the infrastructure behind it.
- jahnu 3y ago
  I read POS as something angry before I read Point Of Sale!
  - hooverd 3y ago
    If you've worked food service or retail those are interchangeable.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  > with that dollar amount applied to your bill that's smart, that way you get tricked into including yet another line item in your tip
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    They mean the deposit to reserve goes toward purchasing whatever you buy to eat.

fwungy 3y ago

Charge a reservation fee that is can be refunded as a credit that can only be used at the restaurant. It will be deducted from your bill or can be used at a later date. Real customers won't object to that.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
OpenTable does this. It’s easy and a great suggestion.
fvrghl 3y ago
That fee would just be passed from the scalper to the buyer of the reservation.
- fwungy 3y ago
  Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues. The scalper also has to front the money and eat the cost of unsold reservations.
  - greiskul 3y ago
    > Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues. Not really. Restaurant charges 50 dollars for reservation, which gets added as credit at bill. Scalper pays the 50 dollars and charges customer 60 dollars for the reservation. Customer gets the 50 dollars from the restaurant. Scalper keeps the 10 dollars of profit. No rebate is needed for the scalper, they already took the customer money with the deposit included. Now, for unsold reservations, yes, it helps by adding some risk to the scalper.
renewiltord 3y ago
Lots of places do this. At Birdsong you pay for your table and then if you’ve ordered the pairing with the tasting menu and nothing optional it’s a very “sit down, eat, visit the place, leave” experience. Honestly, makes the place feel luxury. Well, it is luxury and the food is great but it makes you feel royal.

PM_me_your_math 3y ago

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MrThoughtful 3y ago

Are there others like me, who never reserve a table at a restaurant? I find it much more fun to meet friends at a restaurant without a reservation. Less obligation to follow through. If one of us has a last minute idea to do something else, we go with the flow. If none of the available tables are to our liking, we go with the flow and go elsewhere. If there is no available table, we go with the flow and go elsewhere. So much more serendipity and freedom. One time, we arrived at a restaurant and were told that there is no available table. Since I just read in a book that you usually can bribe the waiter, I jumped over my shadow, said "Maybe we can wait a few minutes and see if something becomes available?" and put a €20 note into the hand of the waiter. Pointed at the best table at the window and said "That one would be perfect of course". 5 minutes later, we were sitting at the table at the window. I was a nerve wreck and felt like a king :)

deleted 3y ago
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yieldcrv 3y ago
Good tip about bribing the host, never tried that I would say you are missing out on very good experiences by doing noncommittal things with noncommittal friends
- MrThoughtful 3y ago
  That could very well be. On the other hand, I feel like others are missing out on those moments where one of my friends calls and says "Hey I'm in this and that part of the city and I'm hungry. What do you do?". And I'm like "I'm sitting in a cafe in that other part, drinking coffee, tinkering on my laptop. How about we meet in 30 minutes in this and that restaurant?". And they are like "Deal. I also have my laptop with me. Have you seen the new OpenAI API? I just cobbled something together with it that I would like to show you.". Most people seem too entangled in job and family for this.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    people that reserve at restaurants also do what you just described this has nothing to do with the crowd that is entangled in job and family?

runarb 3y ago

https://archive.is/pVN3I https://archive.is/pVN3I

forthwall 3y ago

I wonder if this can be resolved with: * Real names on restaurant, just verify their ID. Then ban them from opentable/resy (might be harsh, but will disincentivize behavior) * No transferring reservations, if rez is cancelled, hold the rez and release at a random time later I know for ticketmaster, they have no incentive to put these guards up because they take a % cut for every resale, but for these apps; I think you can put some reasonable defenses, especially since most of the restaurants that face these issues have bills of a few hundred dollars anyway.

justinlkarr 3y ago
As other commenters have shared, there are big disincentives for restaurants to turn people away at the door - they don't get paid, and it is negative experience for both sides (with commensurate brand effects). Bulk-generating accounts -- email addresses, phone numbers and even credit card numbers -- is a solved problem for resellers. In New York State, it is illegal to restrict transfer of tickets. Expect the same for reservations as this battle advances.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Wow, TIL. Do you know why that's the case? It sucks being able to not resell a ticket when plans change, but I'd assume that these days, the convenience of being able to do that is more than offset by the amount lost to scalpers.
  - justinlkarr 3y ago
    From the National Association of Ticket Brokers (the lobbying arm of the ticket reseller industry): https://www.protectticketrights.com/news/86/PRESS+RELEASE+NY+State+Continues+to+Protect+Ticketholders+Ability+to+Freely+Transfer+Tickets https://www.protectticketrights.com/news/86/PRESS+RELEASE+NY... (This is not my personal perspective.)
- rhizome 3y ago
  Bulk generating credit card numbers that can be charged a reservation fee?

justinlkarr 3y ago

From your friends in event ticketing: welcome to the struggle, and we're sorry. I hope Resy figures this out, and I hope we're able to learn from (or license) their solution. I expect their approach will look similar to our path: fight the secondary market with every legal tool, work with them when you can't, improve pricing algorithms to reduce arbitrage opportunity. Customers on both sides of their market will probably be frustrated with each effort. They want to cook and eat, not "be in a marketplace". They will probably blame Resy. The secondary market will probably engage legislative resources, attempting to tailor the law to protect their practices. They will probably do this "in the interest of diners". It will probably become illegal to restrict transfer of reservations, among other things. Good luck y'all. Reach out if you need support. Love, Broadway

standardUser 3y ago
The ticketing industry could completely stop reselling if they wanted to. Require the person who purchases the tickets to be the person who uses the ticket. No transferring, no reselling. But companies would lose out on all that sweet scalper cash, plus they would have to have a virtually unlimited refund policy to deal with legitimately unneeded tickets. I always figured that one-two punch of revenue loss is what prevents ticketing companies from saving us from this hell they've created.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Banning resales is illegal in some places! But then again, e.g. in New York, it's apparently also illegal to resell a ticket for more than 10% above its face value, yet ticket scalping does not seem to be a solved problem...
  - justinlkarr 3y ago
    True on 1 but not on 2. There is no longer a limit on the amount you can resell a ticket for in NYS. see NYS ACA 11-C, Title G, 25.30(c): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30
- 3y ago

pradn 3y ago

There's an app called Dorsia, which lets you purchase seats at sought-after restaurants. The purchase is usually in the form of a per-seat minimum spend. They start at $75 per seat, but some go into the hundreds. This app solves a few problems at once: customers get to buy their way out of the seat-scouting process (keenly watching the apps for open reservations, walking in and putting their name on the waitlist, bribing the host, knowing someone with pull, etc), restaurants guarantee some of their seats go to high-spending clients (you could walk out with spending $35 at a good number of these spots), and companies have something to offer to their customers as a perk - Dorsia membership (the fancy gym chain Equinox gives their customers Dorsia access, for example). None of this is democratic, but that's the nature of luxury. https://www.dorsia.com/ https://www.dorsia.com/

renewiltord 3y ago
That’s pretty cool. If it were an auction it could do price discovery even better.
well_actulily 3y ago
Jesus. Dorsia? On a Friday night?
- gosub100 3y ago
  I wondered about this, or Big Kahuna Burger. Can someone trademark the brand if the brand appeared in the movie first?
- SCUSKU 3y ago
  Great movie, never gets old
jareklupinski 3y ago
every time i heard about this app, i thought it was a prank, because i saw the movie
- pradn 3y ago

grumple 3y ago

High end restaurants in my city and a few European cities I've been to recently required reservations with payment up front. At worst, the restaurant still gets the money if someone (like a bot account) no shows. This would be a pretty high risk endeavor to use a bot to reserve at these restaurants. Maybe restaurants should go back to requiring reservations over the phone or in person. Or require an ID to match the name on the reservation.

kristjansson 3y ago
Starts to look like the venue-artist-scalper relationship. The provider gets to hand off some of the risk in exchange for the peaks of profit.
grork 3y ago
I did a two week trip in the UK recently, and over the ~8 restaurants we ate at, 7 required credit card to reserve, with a specific fee that would be applied if no-show

jrockway 3y ago

So, there are a lot of comments saying that reservations should charge an up-front fee and apply that to the food, but I don't think that will work. First off, plenty of restaurants in New York do that and the problem persists. The underlying problem is that with scalpers buying reservations, they are proving that the market will bear a higher price. People that buy scalped reservations are paying the scalper a fee which WILL NOT be applied to their bill. That means the restaurant is undercharging. The solution to this problem is to handle restaurant reservations like airline reservations. They check your ID before you can board the plane. No reason that restaurants can't do the same. People would be mad, of course, but that's the only way you can prevent a secondary market from setting the price. (They should do this for concert tickets and things like that as well. Artists intentionally sell tickets below market price so that their fans don't get mad at them, but economics simply doesn't all this to exist; someone will always step in to take the profit that you left on the table. By requiring ID, you can prevent the market from stepping in, because the pool of buyers goes down; only people that can get a government ID with your name on it can buy your ticket on the secondary market. John Smith is probably out of luck, but everyone else is fin.) Overall, I don't think the restaurants have a particularly strong incentive to solve this problem. At the end of the day, they are made or broken based on filling up their tables. They do fill all their tables with the current system. So the next remaining hurdle is increasing "fairness". There isn't a way to do this without annoying someone. If they check IDs, someone will be mad that they had their ID checked. If they charge an entrance fee (i.e. a cost for the reservation that isn't applied to your meal), then someone is going to be mad. (The staff will also probably be mad; if you pay $100 for your seat, that's $100 less to tip with.) At the end of the day, I think charging market price on everything is the most fair. If people will pay $100 just to get in the door, they should take the $100. I would definitely pay it for special occasions; you can do it 6 times a year and still pay less than the annual fee on your Amex Plat card!

taurusnoises 3y ago
Seems to me the real fix is to take reservations over the phone, not rely on apps and intermediaries to handle stuff that can easily be handled by humans, and move on.

hn72774 3y ago

> It also sparked the idea of adding the admission charge to the food bill, so customers would not be asked for money at the door. (In his early years, Dimitriou had encountered profound resistance to a cover charge and he often operated Jazz Alley without one, feeling it set the wrong tone for the kind of fine dining establishment he was trying to create.) It worked, and music lovers in general began to view the club as an upscale destination for special occasions. By 2015, the Alley was taking in more than $3 million in admissions. This is about Jazz Alley, in Seattle WA. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/how-seattles-jazz-alley-now-43-became-a-premier-destination/ https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/how-seattle...

alexpotato 3y ago

I remember a popular restaurant in NYC in the late 2000's had a "in person request for reservation only" policy. The thought was that if you lived in the neighborhood, you would walk down to the restaurant around 4pm, make your reservation, go home and then come back for dinner. In practice, this meant that if you wanted a spontaneous "let's go eat there" type of evening and you didn't live in the neighborhood, you wouldn't be eating dinner till after midnight.

mettamage 3y ago

Wait, is this even legal? I made a bot one time for a group of people I know to go to Noma. They invited me to come with them out of gratitude. They told me I could resell that. Other than personally finding it unethical, I also thought it'd be illegal to do so. In any case, writing such a bot for a one time use-case (and just one reservation of which I was a part of) was fun!

tlonny 3y ago

On the subject of scalping, I've never understood why tickets can't be bound to a particular identity. I.e. if you buy tickets as "John Smith", only someone who can prove they are "John Smith" is let through the door. In my head, this completely decapitates scalping as a business. Why can't this also be applied in other sectors (i.e. restaurant reservations)

lxgr 3y ago
In quite a few countries (most notably and possibly surprisingly including the US), government identity is not that easy to come by and/or controversial in some way. In places/contexts that do have functioning identity ecosystems, that does indeed solve the issue, yes. For example,this is why airline ticket scalpers are not a thing in the US: TSA will validate every passenger's ID matching their boarding pass before being allowed into the airport.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  The US is quite an odd beast when it comes to ID, but as far as I understand, not having a government ID at all is mostly a problem with the lower socioeconomic classes. I don't think the people who put down $100 for a reservation will have quite the same problem. Even if government ID is out of the question, asking for a credit card with the same name should also work as an alternative for those without a drivers' license or any other form of ID. I don't have any numbers of course, but I suspect there's not a lot of overlap between the groups of people who don't have credit cards or ID and the people who go to these expensive restaurants. Many other countries (and private airlines) will match your ID with your boarding pass; however, airlines often allow you to change the details on the boarding pass up to the very end, sometimes for a small fee. When the scalpers' customers go through security, their boarding passes match their government ID. If airlines wouldn't allow you to change the name on your ticket the day before your flight, scalpers would probably lose a lot of business, at the cost of minor inconvenience to customers.
cogman10 3y ago
The issue with scalping is it generally doesn't harm the business. To them, a ticket is a ticket and "Oh shucks, sorry you didn't get the one you wanted". Similar to how hoarding goods during a crisis works. So, to answer your question, companies could solve this problem by binding a reservation to an ID. However, there's very little incentive to do that. There's also a slight downside when people show up and say "Oh, forgot my ID". Now you have a fight at the entrance you don't want to deal with.

mmanfrin 3y ago

I worked at OpenTable and this was a problem we also encountered, and it was one of my own projects that was an attempt to combat this. This is one of those posts where I feel like I might actually be an expert but I also feel I can't really talk about specifics of projects for fomer employers :(

standardUser 3y ago

I don't dine at places expensive enough to have encountered this issue. But I do like to dine frequently at high-demand restaurants. The issue I've noticed in NY is that the online reservation platforms have made it trivial for restaurants to require a credit card and charge massive cancellation fees. I've seen mid-range places with $50 fees per person if the reservation is cancelled with less than 24 hours notice. The solution to the above shitshow is the same as the solution to these scalpers. The telephone. Few places will collect your credit card information over the phone for a reservation. And places dealing with scalpers can take names and inform guests that they will need to present ID on arrival. Not an entirely frictionless solution, but I think most people won't mind showing their ID if they are given advanced notice.

uniformlyrandom 3y ago
> The telephone. Like a thing you talk into? Why would anyone in 2023 use one?
- lessbergstein 3y ago
  for restaurant reservations
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  1) Emergency services. 2) When tapping on a screen just gets too much, and the info needs to be info'd fastly.
orf 3y ago
Why would anyone give credit card numbers over the phone. That’s nuts. Just require the same payment card is used for the food as to make the booking.
paxys 3y ago
How is telephone calls a solution? Scalpers can easily outsource it to some call center abroad (which they already do for all other types of scams), while legitimate customers now have it much harder.

deleted 3y ago

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m3kw9 3y ago

We should all fight back against tipping

duxup 3y ago

Just take a name and note that you have you present ID / no transfers allowed …?

matteoraso 3y ago

I want to say that you can easily solve the problem by requiring a phone call, but with audio deepfakes, that might actually be really easy to circumvent with automated chatbots.

analog31 3y ago

I predict the enshittification of restaurant dining. My hunch is that turning restaurant reservations into a speculative bidding market will not make it better for restaurants on average, but will just extract value while making the business more volatile, and also less pleasant for the average customer.

InCityDreams 3y ago
Are tips included (before - enshittification: after - free choice(.

tcherasaro 3y ago

This article is certainly making the rounds. I tried to google the title in firefox focus as I sometimes do to get around the paywall and found a weird youtube video of someone sleepily reading the article: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wF_nne164 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wF_nne164 Lots of syndication in the serp also.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

The problem is why people are willing to spend like crazy. Before pandemic most of restaurants are not that hard to reserve.

CraigRo 3y ago

What I don't understand is why you can't require the holder of the reservation to show up or lose it. Destroys the incentive to resell it

pknerd 3y ago

Don't get why articles behind the paywall are referred here

youcantcook 3y ago

A bunch of tech people talking about monetizing the food industry genuinely makes me want to kill myself.

SergeAx 3y ago

Before the escalation of the Russian-Ukranian war in 2022, the Moscow and St.Petersburg restaurant scene was quite vibrant. Some places were challenging to book, etc. These were their ideas for making reservations still accessible: + Accept reservations by phone or in person only and ask for the patron's phone number. Then call back 1 hour before to confirm the reservation. + Make the most popular times non-bookable. You have to come in person and check how many guests are in a queue and how long you should wait for the table. Some people are okay to wait at the bar, others will head to less busy places. +++ Open a spin-off of a popular place, and redirect the clients' stream there.