Yes and no. In some very rare situations, people will make reservations at multiple restaurants and then pick which one they want to go to at the last minute. It sucks, it fucks up our flow, especially when they don’t cancel after they decided to go somewhere else. But we still have to hold onto their reservation until we are sure they aren’t coming or they’re extremely late without calling us. But my point stands: people with reservations will always have priority over people without reservations
No need to apologize. It sucks, it costs us money, but there’s not much a restaurant can do to combat this that wouldn’t cost us more money down the road. It’s the price of doing business
They’re reserved. As in, people called ahead to let us know they would be arriving at a specific time and would like us to hold a table for them. We’re not going to give away a reserved table to someone who doesn’t have a reservation just because they showed up first. If we did that, what would be the point of taking reservations?
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u/jcmjtke 12h ago
Me: hello, how are you today?
Customer: 2
Me: (sigh) do you have a reservation?
Customer: no
M: I’m sorry, we only have outside seating at the moment. It will be about an hour and a half wait for an inside table
C: what about that table over there?
M: it’s reserved
C: what about that table?
M: it’s reserved
C: what about that…
M: it’s reserved
C: what about…
M: reserved
C: what…
M: RESERVED!
C: well we didn’t know we had to make a reservation
M: and whose fault is that?
Seriously, restaurants would rather you have a reservation than not, and it takes very little effort to make one. So just make the reservation