I get why popular restaurants don’t want to take reservations. Case in point, the very popular Chubby Fish restaurant in Charleston, S.C. According to this piece:
Chubby Fish doesn’t accept reservations because London (James London, Chubby Fish chef and co-owner) doesn’t want the restaurant to be exclusive. The goal is for people to be able to show up at 4 p.m. and be able to eat dinner the same night.
In some way that makes sense: you don’t have empty tables ever and the people who really want to go will line up.
Alas there is a problem:
Now that some people are paying extra for line waiters to arrive early and claim desirable dining times, others in line aren’t getting the same opportunity they once had. As a result, they’re having to arrive earlier and earlier, London said.
“We never wanted that for our guests. It’s not the hospitality we wanted to display,” he said.
Recently, London spoke with the line-waiting businesses…about limiting the number of reservations they’re allowed to procure at a time, he said. But he worries about what could happen if the businesses continue to grow.
“I don’t want to be forced into having to take reservations to eliminate the professional line-waiting services, but what does it look like three years down the road?” he said.
And how much are these line-waiting services charging?
Ella Ward, a senior at the College of Charleston, realized that made for a good business opportunity….Ward has turned waiting in line at Chubby Fish into a thriving side hustle. She charges $60 on weekdays and $80 on weekends to wait out the line and snag seating times on behalf of others. She recruited other CofC students to help her manage requests, and the team is booked through June.
This is just a form of line jumping and is not unlike someone slipping FOH some money to get a good table. And not for a small amount either. If everyone is paying $60 or more to get a seat in your restaurant, you are an exclusive restaurant, whether you like it or not.
No reservations (i.e., supply) is fine for restaurants that have roughly the same demand. But if demand vastly outstrips supply, you are going to have problems like line-waiting services. You are going to be transformed into an exclusive restaurant by the marketplace. In the era of social media and vast tourism where the marketplace is gigantic, this is going to become more of a problem for some restaurants like Chubby Fish.
Smart People I Know 