April 5, 2011

Here at Serious Eats, we eat out at a lot of restaurants. In recent years, we’ve seen many choose to go without accepting reservations, a move that frustrates many diners. But for restaurateurs, there’s often good reasons to go book-less: crowds. “Restaurateurs sometimes see great benefit in not accepting reservations. It helps them create a particular kind of scene,” says Sam Sifton of The New York Times. With food costs and labor costs high, but diners still looking for recession deals, margins are slim. Restaurateurs want every table full, and no-shows can make a serious dent in their revenue.

Reservations can help gauge the numbers but it’s a bit of a game of roulette. If someone has a reservation at 6 p.m. and shows up late, the guest who booked for 8 p.m. suffers. Tony Maws of Craigie on Main in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that “realistically, every night someone doesn’t show.” If they’d called that morning, he could have filled the table with people from the waiting list, but if they don’t the table sits empty for too long. Many restaurants now take credit card numbers and charge a flat fee for no-shows—$50 a head is not unheard of. It’s a move that can guarantee that canceling parties actually call instead of leaving the reservationist in the lurch. At the same time, credit card confirmations can alienate the potential guests, the vast majority of whom are planning on honoring their reservations and don’t appreciate the implication that they might skip out.

Taking reservations isn’t free: the labor cost is significant. At Craigie on Main, three reservationists and a manager make taking reservations their full-time job. Reservation sites like OpenTable don’t erase that cost: you still need to juggle tricky situations by hand and have someone in charge of noting when VIP’s make reservations, or when a guest has a special request or a food allergy.

Weekends in particular can get tough for restaurants that don’t take reservations. Jen Fields, general manager of Toro in Boston’s South End says that their tapas-style of dining can compound the problem, and is the main reason they don’t take reservations. With a standard meal structure, the waiter and kitchen staff have most of the control over the pace of the meal, slowing it down or speeding it up as reservations require. At a casual tapas-style restaurant though, this is not the case. “Some people order all their food at once, but the majority of people are ordering a few plates at at time. So the diner is really controlling the pace of their meal (which we encourage!). As a result, it's impossible for us to book the restaurant because we don't want to limit the tapas experience to 1:30-2 hours turns,” explains Jen.

So should your restaurant accept reservations? That depends on your answers to the following questions.

Is there a lot of foot traffic? If you’re on a busy street in a city and you’re planning on catering to neighborhood walk-ins, you may be able to fill your seats with casual passers-by. If your restaurant is out of the way, you’ll want to have the increased certainty of reservations.

Are you serving long multicourse menus, quicker dinners or casual-format menus? If your restaurant serves casual meals that don’t take too long, you’ll turn the tables more quickly and those who are waiting won’t be there forever. But if your restaurant is focused on multicourse meals that take several hours, reservations will help space out guests properly. Structured meals are also easier to time properly: with a set tasting menu, you know that a given table is going to take about three hours to eat, for example.

Is there somewhere for guests to go while they wait? Do you have a comfortable waiting area and/or a bar that can handle the crowd? Or is there another bar on the block where guests can go without straying too far? If not, you should probably take reservations. Even with a space to wait, restaurateurs should consider the value of their guest’s time. As a restaurateur, you want guests to have a good experience, not just fill your seats after an hour of aggravation and never return. “Think of yourself as advocating on the guest’s behalf,” says Maws. Happy customers make return customers.

Serious Eats New York Editor Carey Jones says, “I do prefer that a restaurant take reservations; I find myself avoiding ones that don't. Especially in Manhattan, where restaurants can get unreasonably crowded, waiting for a table can be extraordinarily unpleasant, when you're elbowing your way up to the bar or constantly dodging busboys. I totally respect whatever a restaurateur decides; however, as a customer, I find myself avoiding places that don't take reservations, as I tend to put off visiting until I can go at an extreme off-hour.“ Founder Ed Levine concurs: “For anybody over the age of 30 who values their time, it’s a necessity that they take reservations.” He goes one further: “And I’m willing to pay for the cost of the reservationist.”

Serious Eats Managing Editor Kenji Lopez-Alt disagrees. “The way I dine, I love to be able to just drop in on a place and know that I’ll eventually be seated and fed. Most of the time I don’t have the foresight or ability to plan for a reservation. I also like the convivial atmosphere of a packed restaurant. In fact, even when a restaurant takes reservations, I most often find myself waiting to grab a seat at the bar to dine.”

The Times' Sifton says he gets frustrated with crowded restaurants that don’t take reservations not just on a personal level, but on a professional one as well: “I can complain about it as a middle-aged curmudgeon (I'm not wanted here!), but it is a professional annoyance, too: critics hate restaurants that don't take reservations because a regular diner can make a decision about whether to eat at the place despite the line, but a critic cannot. He has to eat in the place even if there is a two-hour wait. This leads to crankiness.”

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Maggie Hoffman, Article, Restaurants, Bars, and Other Food Service Establishments, Restaurants, Bars, and Other Food , Serious Eats, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Sam Sifton, Carey Jones