New York suddenly stops the enshitification of restaurant reservations

There was a time when you had to call a restaurant on the phone to make a reservation. You could spend five minutes going through the whole process just to be told there were no tables available. The internet and apps like Resy made all of this much simpler. Then the bots arrived…

In New York City, getting a reservation at a trendy new restaurant has become a nightmare. In April, the New Yorker published a fascinating story about people who make thousands of dollars a year reselling restaurant reservations on sites like Appointment Trader and Cita Reservations. These sellers often use robots to automate the process of capturing reservations the moment they are available and then reselling the reservation for six hundred dollars. Think of it as Stubhub for restaurants.

Hopefully, this mess is coming to an end. Earlier this month, New York lawmakers approved the Restaurant reservation anti-piracy lawIt still needs 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 the rich. In many cases, it is. Still, I think most people like to treat themselves to a fancy dinner on their birthday or anniversary. And the fact is that, if you look for New York Times List Of the hundred best restaurants, you are looking at the menu of hungry robots. It’s all part of a social evil that is making our general Culture exclusive to the highest bidder. There are many expensive places to eat that serve disappointing food, but many restaurants. They care about what they produce and want to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. Just as artists aren’t making money off the astronomical price of robot-purchased concert tickets, chefs aren’t seeing a cent of that six hundred dollar margin in bookings.

In fact, this situation seems to have hurt restaurants. On Monday, Bloomberg published a report citing Sevenrooms data showing that “the restaurant cancellation rate in New York City rose to 19% last month, up from 17.5% in May of last year.” It’s not a huge increase, but the reasoning is that resellers are taking all the reservations and simply canceling them when they can’t find anyone to pay a premium. The outlet spoke with Amy Zhou, chief operating officer of Gracious Hospitality, who discussed the issue at the company’s Cote Korean Steakhouse:

Zhou estimates that on a busy night, Cote will serve about 400 customers with his tableside grilled beef. Meanwhile, you’ll lose as many as 100 reservations to bot-induced cancellations and no-shows. The revenue loss 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 pulled the plug on several reservations so customers could book them over the phone. “About a year ago, we had to bring in two additional reservationists,” Zhou said. “It is your job to audit the books every day and fill them with legitimate reserves.”

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 moron hundreds of dollars, then restaurants had to rebook over the phone.

The Bloomberg report maintains that “New York’s most popular dining reservations will remain impossible to rate.” The idea is that supply and demand are phantom forces that don’t worry about your mortal regulations. If someone is willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a table, someone else will find a way. to make this happen. I disagree. Sure, some restaurants will always have resellers, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue making it convenient. No law eliminates a problem completely.

Bloomberg spoke to a reseller named Alex Eisler, who says he makes $100,000 a year from the business. He admitted that if the law is passed, he will probably stop doing it.

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

To me, this regulation shows that we, as a society, can identify a problem and do something about it. Why not? Do we have laws that guarantee our rights to privacy or data portability? Why can’t we ban planned obsolescence or dark patterns? Well, these things just don’t bother the rich, I guess. Still, I think there is hope in the fact that “reserve piracy” can go from an article in the New Yorker about a law passed against it in just three months. We just have to try.