Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - would you pay a deposit for a restaurant reservation?

ken0042 · 12-20-2021, 02:47 PM

Reading this thread, I wonder if some of the differences in opinion are due to people's experience in working in restaurants. Reservations in general are not good for business; from a pure perspective of number of tables they can serve in a shift. Let's say your average party stays for an hour at the table. To accommodate a reservation, you need to have that table on hold and empty for around 15 minutes ahead of time. So now each seating is 75 minutes instead of 60. Given that each meal rush is within a narrow time, if a restaurant has 20 tables; from 5:00-8:00 they could handle 48 reservations. If they just used a waiting list, they could handle 60 seatings in that same time.

Now reservations are good customer service, which is why many restaurants offer them.

Let's go back to those 48 reservations, if 10% of them "no show"- they have lost 4 or 5 seatings. Sure, after some time they could re-sell the table. However even 15 minutes after the no show the table has been sitting for 30 minutes at this point. And they may not be able to offer it to a walk up as now the next reservation may have to wait.

That being said, charging a deposit or pre-authing a credit card seems reasonable to me. However I would say that even having one hour notice should be sufficient. Unlike a hotel who may have turned somebody away at 3pm and holds a room until 7pm, the table will likely re-sell if the restaurant is busy. If the restaurant isn't busy enough to re-sell the table, that means they were likely little harmed by the short notice cancellation.

So I would say it is reasonable to have a pre-auth and a penalty of what one person's meal would cost. It gives the restaurant something back for a no show, and provides enough incentive for the customer to want to call in to cancel.

12-20-2021, 02:47 PM	#65
ken0042 Playboy Mansion Poolboy Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Close enough to make a beer run during a TV timeout Exp:	Reading this thread, I wonder if some of the differences in opinion are due to people's experience in working in restaurants. Reservations in general are not good for business; from a pure perspective of number of tables they can serve in a shift. Let's say your average party stays for an hour at the table. To accommodate a reservation, you need to have that table on hold and empty for around 15 minutes ahead of time. So now each seating is 75 minutes instead of 60. Given that each meal rush is within a narrow time, if a restaurant has 20 tables; from 5:00-8:00 they could handle 48 reservations. If they just used a waiting list, they could handle 60 seatings in that same time. Now reservations are good customer service, which is why many restaurants offer them. Let's go back to those 48 reservations, if 10% of them "no show"- they have lost 4 or 5 seatings. Sure, after some time they could re-sell the table. However even 15 minutes after the no show the table has been sitting for 30 minutes at this point. And they may not be able to offer it to a walk up as now the next reservation may have to wait. That being said, charging a deposit or pre-authing a credit card seems reasonable to me. However I would say that even having one hour notice should be sufficient. Unlike a hotel who may have turned somebody away at 3pm and holds a room until 7pm, the table will likely re-sell if the restaurant is busy. If the restaurant isn't busy enough to re-sell the table, that means they were likely little harmed by the short notice cancellation. So I would say it is reasonable to have a pre-auth and a penalty of what one person's meal would cost. It gives the restaurant something back for a no show, and provides enough incentive for the customer to want to call in to cancel.