“Sorry, we’re booked”
“What are my chances of being able to walk in?”
“We suggest you arrive very early”
“Thanks”
No dice.
Since I can’t make a reservation on my own, I try using one of the many reservation services that have been popping up on line recently. They call restaurants, make reservations and then auction them off on the internet. There used to be a set price of $30-$45 dollars for such reservations but those prices have gone the way of the two dollar beer. I decide to try and compare a set of these concierge sites. Of the 6 sites I try I see a four-top at Restaurant X going for as little as $90 at 9:30 on a Friday and for as much as $150 for 8pm the same night. One site will sell us the four top Friday night at 8 and a two top for the next week (non prime time) for a combined $175—a bargain! As I go down my list of lesser restaurants the prices go down, but then again do I really want to pay a price just to go somewhere and pay more—all so I can eat good food with friends on a Friday night?
Since the cost of living in New York is becoming higher and higher no one seems to be noticing the add-ons to the cost of dining out—after all, most people who would want to eat at any of these restaurants should be able to pay for the reservation in addition to the meal.
I end up buying a table for four for $80 dollars at a restaurant that ranks somewhere between six and ten on my list. I then have to explain to my friends that our meal will cost an extra $20 to which they groan, call me a snob and tell me they can’t believe I would go to a restaurant where we have to pay just to get a table.
I used to be able to call one to two months ahead when making dinner reservations (assuming I knew myself and all of my dinner companions would be free at specified time and date) but these days even that is becoming harder to do. It seems these online services call two months in advance for the same restaurants and grab all the prime reservation times. Even when I try to plan ahead I end up having to eat dinner at 11pm unless of course, I pay.
Of course some ethically righteous restaurant owners (headed by Danny Meyer) in this hypothetical future are decidedly against this new phenomenon. Its not that online table scalping is affecting their business, it isn’t yet… Any restaurant worth its weight has
tables up for auction for the buzz, because it helps reinforce its image as a place to eat and as a place in which to be seen. Diners continue to buy tables and even continue to walk in. This group of opposing owners however, has a hard time asking for diner identification cards and instituting cancellation fees without alienating their clientele…It has become difficult for them to run their restaurant on their own, or even their patrons’ terms. So the table auctioneers keep on devising clever and clandestine ways to auction tables to the highest bidder.I have demands for my dining experience and will not settle for a mediocre restaurant. At the same time, I am not the type of person who can afford to eat at the best restaurants New York has to offer on a regular basis. Neither can most of my friends, a group of just out-of-college young professionals living in New York. As a result, I end up spending a lot of time reading reviews, browsing online menus and trying to find a restaurant that fits perfectly into a price range that will give us a great meal and experience on the night we choose to dine out.
I suppose my point in telling this story is that I am not a fan of the concept of a site like PrimeTimeTables where members can browse a list of tables offered at different times and dates at some of the most frequented restaurants in the city. There isn’t simply money involved; there is also subterfuge and deception. After the reservation is bought, the diner then must eat under a pseudonym and is explicitly forbidden from mentioning the site upon arrival for dinner.
I actually want to like the idea of being able to get to go to a place that would normally be fully booked for a small price, but something inside me that I can’t get rid of despises this notion. Despite the fact that this service is similar to scalping sports or theatre tickets (which is widely accepted) and doesn’t stray far from paying one’s secretary to call and make a restaurant reservations, something about it feels different and I don’t think I could ever bring myself to use it.
While I don’t think that such sites affect my dining plans now, I am afraid that the service they offer is almost too good to be true. If primetime tables is profitable (and it should be since it charges for a service that costs little more than ti
me to provide) who is to stop more and more people from copying it. The scenario I envisioned earlier could be what happens when more PrimeTimeTables-type sites begin to launch. Eventually tables might end up being up for auction, giving the best times and nights of the week to the highest bidders, it’s not hard to imagine $300 dollars for a prime table at Babbo or even more for a table at Per Se if such a site would be able to obtain a table there.From an economic perspective, a site like PrimeTimeTables makes perfect sense. Clearly there are people willing to pay for a restaurant reservation, thus creating demand for the service they provide. I have heard the argument that it’s not fair to the restaurant that a third party is selling their intended free commodity for a price. However, would we feel any better about this if the auction site gave the restaurant a cut? What if the restaurant auctioned off the table themselves?
Why do I feel that this is so much more dishonorable than any other sort of scalping? How is it different from sports or theatre scalping? One difference is that at a sports game or Broadway show, anything else you purchase once inside is entirely under your control. You don’t have to buy food or drinks or anything else that might be up for sale. At a restaurant once you enter, you really don’t get much (except for maybe Bloomberg water) unless you pay for it. Once inside you must pay for food or there is no point in entering the restaurant. It would be the equivalent of buying tickets to a football game then having to pay more money for someone to take the blindfold off so you could see the players.
I also seriously have a problem with having to use a pseudonym to eat. Maybe most people don’t have a problem using a false identity, but I do. Being someone who gets profiled at airports (my brownish complexion and non-American sounding name make me a prime target) or anywhere else where a terrorist make an appearance, I value my identity as a New Yorker, and part of the downtown community. I am me and don’t want to be anybody else. Lying to people and saying that I’m somebody I’m not seems fundamentally wrong to me.
If I am so against this idea why don’t I just not use the site?
Because whether or not I use it my dining experience is likely to be impacted. Why should I have to pay a middleman or a restaurant for that matter, an exorbitant sum just to get in the door? Am I really that desperate to inflate my dining bill? What happens when these sites proliferate (heaven forbid!) only letting those with significantly more income than myself experience the joy of eating truly great food at a restaurant of their choice? I have no problems paying the restaurants and their chefs the price they think is fair, but what will I do when I am not willing to pay for a table at a good restaurant? Where will I eat?
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