New York Slams the Brakes on the Enshittification of Restaurant Reservations

There was once a time when you had to call a restaurant on the phone to book a reservation. You might spend five minutes going through the whole process only to be told no tables were available. The internet and apps like Resy made all of this much more simple. Then the bots came…

In New York City, landing a reservation at a hot new restaurant has become a nightmare. In April, the New Yorker published a fascinating story about the people making thousands of dollars a year from reselling restaurant bookings on sites like Appointment Trader and Cita Reservations. These sellers often use bots to automate the process of snapping up reservations the moment they become available and then they resell the booking for as much as six hundred dollars. Think of it as Stubhub for restaurants.

Hopefully, this mess is now coming to an end. Earlier this month, New York legislators passed the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act. It still has to be signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, but assuming it becomes law, any third party selling a reservation could be fined up to $1,000 per violation.

I understand if this sounds like a problem for rich people. In many cases, it is. Still, I believe most people like to treat themselves to a fancy dinner on a birthday or anniversary. And the fact is, if you look up the New York Times list of the hundred best restaurants, you’re staring at the menu for hungry bots. It’s all part of a societal ill that’s making our overall culture exclusive to the highest bidder. There are plenty of expensive places to eat that serve underwhelming food, but a lot of restaurants care about what they produce and want to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. In the same way that artists aren’t making money from the astronomical price of bot-acquired concert tickets, the chefs aren’t seeing a dime of that six hundred dollar markup on reservations.

In fact, this situation appears to have harmed restaurants. On Monday, Bloomberg published a report citing data from Sevenrooms showing that “the cancellation rate for restaurants in New York City grew to 19% last month, versus 17.5% in May last year.” It’s not a huge uptick, but the reasoning goes that resellers are grabbing all the reservations and simply canceling when they don’t find someone to pay a premium. The outlet spoke with Amy Zhou, executive director of operations for Gracious Hospitality who spoke about the issue at the company’s Cote Korean Steakhouse:

Zhou estimates that on a busy night, Cote will serve around 400 customers its tableside grilled beef. Meanwhile, it will lose as many as 100 reservations to bot-driven cancellations and no shows. Lost revenue is at least $10,000 on nights when the no show rate is high, based on an average spend of $100 to $150 per customer.

It became such a problem that the company took a number of reservations offline so customers could book them by phone. “About a year ago, we had to bring in two extra reservationists,” Zhou said. “It’s their job to audit the books every day and fill them with legit reservations.”

So, the internet made it possible to get a reservation without calling restaurants one by one, then the internet made it impossible to get a reservation without paying some asshole hundreds of dollars, then the restaurants had to go back to booking by phone.

Bloomberg’s report argues that “NYC’s hottest dining reservations will stay impossible to score.” The idea is that supply and demand are phantom forces that do not care about your mortal regulations. If someone’s willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a table, someone else will find a way to make it happen. I disagree. Sure, some restaurants will always have scalpers, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue making it convenient. No law ever eliminates a problem entirely.

Bloomberg spoke to one reservation reseller named Alex Eisler who claims he makes $100,000 a year on the hustle. He admitted that if the law passes, he’ll probably stop doing it.

“Until then, I wouldn’t say there’s a reason for me to stop,” he said.

For me, this regulation shows that we, as a society, can identify a problem and do something about it. Why don’t we have laws guaranteeing our rights to privacy or data portability? Why can’t we ban planned obsolescence or dark patterns? Well, this stuff just doesn’t annoy rich people, I guess. Still, I think there’s hope in the fact that “reservation piracy” can go from a feature in the New Yorker to a law passed against it in just three months. We just have to try.

Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews

Entertainment blogs & Forums