“There are people who accept it and people who don’t. Let them make an effort so that we can make it to the end of the month,” comments Danitza Gabriela, Executive Chef of the Manifiesto 13 restaurant, with a laugh, in a video on the channel ‘The Xef in Kitchen‘. It refers to the charging of a fee if someone does not attend a reservation at your restaurant, But although it may seem drastic, it is not a problem that should be laughed at. It is a whole phenomenon baptized as ‘no show‘, and there are already restaurants that are taking measures.
For example, charge 15 euros if you don’t show up.
He no-show. Also known as ‘ghost reserve’, it is one of the nightmares of the restoration. The name is quite revealing: it is a reservation for a table that, without warning, does not show up at the agreed time. There the restaurant fills its gap, but there are times when it is not possible, leaving holes of hundreds of euros depending on the case.
There are situations in which it is inevitable not to show up, even others of greater cause in which the last thing we think about is calling to say that we will not be able to go, but unfortunately it is becoming common in certain cities.
Spread booking. Another Anglicism that is easy to understand. In large cities, there are diners who adopt the strategy of making reservations in several restaurants at the same time. This may seem like nonsense, but it makes “sense”: they secure all the options they like and then decide on the fly which one they prefer, not canceling, or not canceling early enough, on the discarded options.
Freak. How often this occurs depends on the city. TheFork platform carried out a study on phantom reservations and, according to their analysis, between January and July of this year, there was not a single month in which no-shows accounted for more than 3.4% of the total. Then, it depends on the regions and, as we say, the city.
Others studies They point out that, in large cities in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand, the absence rate is around 15%. In the United States and Canada, 20%.
15 euros. According to that same study by The Fork, of the total number of diners who do not attend the reservation, only 38% do so due to last-minute unforeseen events that have prevented them from calling the restaurant. 7% say that they do not notify because they are embarrassed to call and 55% say that they get lost or forget that they had made the reservation. That is precisely what is leading restaurants to take action.
We mentioned the words of Danitza, from the Manifiesto 13 restaurant, at the beginning of the article, and the amount they charge for not appearing is 15 euros. He explains it at minute 8:10 of this video: “Every day we call to reconfirm the reservation. We are applying a cancellation policy, only on weekends, because those are the days when we have the most occupancy. It is 15 euros, just so that people have that bit of respect.”
Danitza continues by pointing out that “it’s very hard when you’re starting out. If you don’t have a lot of fuss and the table doesn’t come to you, you’ve already prepared… and it’s complicated. There are people who accept it and people who don’t.” At Gordon Ramsay’s, if you don’t cancel at least 48 hours in advance, it’s 150 pounds.
Impact. Manifesto 13 is not the only restaurant that applies this. A couple of years ago, Amelia, a restaurant in San Sebastián with two Michelin stars, charged 510 euros for a service not provided to three diners who did not show up. It was a case that came to court after a complaint from one of the customers, and the result was the ruling in favor of the restaurant. Studies indicate that losses due to no-shows can suppose between 5% and 20%, depending on the type of business, and this is what has motivated locals to move tab.
For example, with card number like warranty and deposits, as are done in other forms of entertainment and consumption. It has even come to pose the expulsion from the reservation system of clients who accumulate several.
Images | Hitesh Dewasi
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