More and more restaurants are doing it: no reservations, walk-ins only

Restaurant owners are going completely crazy over it: people who reserve a table and then casually fail to show up. Scandalous, because they’re left with an empty table, while they may already have turned people away. This new trend solves the problem in one fell swoop: no more reservations, walk-ins only.

Annoying: you’re in the city with friends, you want to grab something to eat, but when you walk into your favorite place, there’s no room. Huh? You can see all those empty tables, can’t you? No, they’re all reserved. Grrrr! According to food trend watcher Gijsbregt Brouwer, this reliance on reservations is a direct consequence of the coronavirus measures. Back then, you had to reserve in advance, otherwise a restaurant wasn’t allowed to let you in. According to him, most restaurants have stuck with it. That way, they always know what to expect, how many people are coming and how many staff members they need to schedule.

Ridiculous!

But complaints are also pouring in, from restaurants that is. We previously wrote about people who make reservations but then cancel at the very last minute – with some excuse – or don’t show up at all. Ridiculous. That costs the hospitality industry a lot of money, because they’ve kept the table free. Unacceptable, especially when things were cautiously starting to pick up again after the pandemic. That also has to do with how busy things are, says Gijsbregt. ‘Precisely because you have to reserve everywhere and people like having the freedom to make their choices at the last minute, they make extra reservations. Sometimes at four or five places at once. Obviously, you (usually) only go to one restaurant per evening, leaving the other places with so-called no-shows: guests who don’t turn up.’ Joris Bijdendijk had already noticed that trend. ‘People with that mentality are destroying our business,’ he believes.

Get rid of that reservation book

The solution: get rid of that hefty reservation book. Just open the doors and see who walks in. He sees plenty of restaurants already doing this in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. That way, food lovers can decide at the last minute where they want to eat. A restaurant also immediately knows where it stands. And if a staff member is sick, or not at their workplace for another reason? Then they simply accept fewer guests—problem solved again. Gijsbregt knows a few restaurants that already work this way: La Petite Soeur in Rotterdam and Café Beurre in Amsterdam, for example.

Chopsticks

Is it ideal? Maybe not. Gijsbregt is afraid you may have to wait a long time before you can sit down at your favorite restaurant. Understandable—just think of Thai Snackbar Bird in Amsterdam on a Saturday night, where a whole line of people sometimes waits an hour before they can put their chopsticks into the pad thai. Fortunately, some restaurants use a hybrid approach: you can make a reservation, but they always keep a few tables free for people who walk in. Great—that way, that spontaneous ‘night out for dinner’ is preserved. And if it’s a special occasion, you don’t have to walk all over the city in your high heels: you can simply reserve a table at your favorite place.

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Source: AD.nl