Do you reserve a table in a restaurant and don't show up? Well then, pay

In mid-April the news broke that a judge had sided with the Amelia restaurant in San Sebastián for charging 170 euros to each of the three diners who had not turned up to eat at said venue despite having a confirmed reservation. This is a practice that is very common in award-winning restaurants such as the Amelia, with two Michelin stars, and when booking a hotel room, among other services, but until not so long ago it was much less so in the restaurants you go to. eat and most mortals can afford.

The losses carried over from the pandemic and the increase in the cost of products, due to inflation and the war in Ukraine, have made it more difficult for restaurants to balance their numbers without increasing -too much- the prices of their menus and cards. For this reason, now, a table that is not occupied at the last minute, due to a client who does not even bother to notify, has ceased to be simple rudeness that could be perfectly ignored, to become a stab at the account of results. According to some studies, the percentage of no shows in restaurants is between 20 and 30%

For this reason, restaurateurs are increasingly losing their fear of asking for the card and charging those who do not show up. Most of those who appear in this report insist on the need to educate diners in the same way that it never occurs to anyone to think that if someone, for whatever reason, cannot go to a concert or the theater You will not get your money back, the logical thing is that they can charge an amount for what they stop earning. All in all, they are flexible and if they are notified in advance, they also understand that it is normal not to punish anyone.

As one of the restaurateurs interviewed for this report says, “every restaurant is different”, as are the reasons and casuistry of each one of them to request or not the credit card and proceed to make a charge in case of no show .

The Hisop restaurant, in Barcelona and with a Michelin star, had so far resisted asking for the credit card to guarantee the reservation and to penalize customers who did not show up, but finally its owner, the chef Oriol Ivern, has decided to take the step “We didn’t have many no shows and we considered that the risk that there would be people who would back out having to leave their credit card was greater than the benefit of asking for it and charging something to the few who did not come,” explains Ivern. But things have gotten worse, especially on Friday nights and the two Saturday services. “Right now, for any of these services you have to book eight weeks in advance to find a table in our restaurant, due to the demand we have. And we have found that more than half of the reservations ended up being cancelled”, he says.

Ivern understands that this increase in cancellations has to do, precisely, with the fact that you have to book so far in advance and that it is easy that, two months from now, unforeseen events may arise that make it impossible to visit the restaurant. “For this reason, for ten days only those who do not notify and do not come we charge 60 euros per head, which represents 60% of our average ticket.” This amount “corresponds to what we stop earning. We are not charging the cost of the food that we stop serving and that we can serve to someone else,” Ivern clarifies.

They only do this for weekend reservations and during the week for tables of five or more people. “The capacity of our premises is 20 people. So a table of five is 25% of the occupancy. At the moment we have not had to charge anyone for it”, adds this chef. “We have introduced the guarantee of the reservation with a credit card in a very surgical way. We already did it with tables of nine people and the reality is that when you ask for it, people are much more responsible”, says Ivern.

Santi Colominas had a restaurant in Barcelona that could seat 35 people. “Many Friday nights he would have 35 reservations and end up feeding five or six diners. The rest neither came nor notified them, ”he says. Then he opened the Toc al Mar restaurant, on the Aiguablava beach (Begur). “We serve 300 people in each service and there were 80 people who did not show up.” Since, two years ago, they ask for a credit card and charge 10 euros per diner to those who do not notify and do not go to the restaurant, end of the problem.

“The first time we did it was one night of Sant Joan. We had 300 reservations and we gave dinner to 300 people, ”she says. Now, there are very few people who do not come or notify. Perhaps four or five per service, and since there are always passers-by on the beach, it is easy to occupy the tables”, adds Colominas.

Currently, Toc al Mar enters “between 4,000 and 5,000 euros a year in penalties. But that’s because we have a lot of volume and in no case do we make a living from this. We do it by feeding our customers.”

But it is that the problem was not only economic. “There were people who asked you for a table in the first line, tables that were in high demand, and if they did not show up later and it was free and in full view of the rest of the diners, you would look bad with those who had asked for it and you had not given it to them because theoretically it was reserved”.

In any case, Colominas is not at all inflexible. “We keep track of the reservations and reconfirm them all. The limit to cancel it without penalty is 12 hours, but if someone calls 30 minutes before, we cancel the reservation and we don’t charge you anything”.

This cook assures that “from the first moment his clients agreed to leave the card without problems. It is something that happens in other countries of the world and in other services and nothing happens”.

Adelf Morales, owner of the Topik restaurant in Barcelona, ​​also believes that “you have to end up educating and disciplining customers”, which is why he will soon start asking for credit cards. In his case, he even considers the option of asking for a down payment. “We have no other choice because people are very irresponsible and if we don’t do it out of fear, many restaurants will end up closing. It can’t be that they reserve a table for you, they don’t come, they don’t notify and then you see that they are in another place, which happens more than you might think”.

In his case, “we already requested a partial payment of 50% in advance by Bizum when we made a special menu on request. He is also adamant about being late. “Those who arrive 15 minutes late, are left without a table. And we no longer admit large groups, because they are the most dangerous.”

Morales believes that there are customers who do not understand “the amount of fixed expenses of a restaurant and that part of those costs are those that are trying to be recovered by applying these penalties, not the food that we stop serving.”

Ignasi Camps and Laia Cano run Ca l’Ignasi in Cantonigròs (Osona). They have resisted, but they can no longer. “We don’t work as many days as a restaurant in Barcelona can. At the end of the year, there are little more than 140 days; weekends and bridges. And a single service, since, logically, breathalyzer controls have been increased, people who used to come for dinner no longer come. That is why the no shows have a great impact, ”explains Camps.

Especially serious is the situation on the bridges “when everyone goes out and the reservations fill, in principle, the restaurant. The problem is that many people don’t know what kind of restaurant we are and when they arrive and see the menu or get a bit of information, they leave or don’t come at all because ‘they thought better of it’. If that happens to you with a table of five, they charge 25% of the billing for that service,’” he adds.

Until now, “every time a new customer calls, we ask them if they know what kind of store we are. They tell you yes, and then an hour before the reservation, when there is no more room to occupy that table, they cancel you.

So this couple has decided to start asking for the credit card, and although they have not yet decided how much they will charge those who do not come, they are considering the possibility “of not keeping the money, but rather keeping it like a piggy bank so that that client can use it.” have if you decide to come another day”.

Lluís Bernils is the second generation at the helm of El Celler de Matadepera, which he currently runs with his two sons. They have never asked for a card and do not plan to do so, but they understand that there are restaurants that do. “Each restaurant is different and has to know its clientele. We have loyal customers, we know them all and asking for a credit card would cause us problems. If everyone does it, maybe we’ll end up doing it, but for now we won’t,” he says.

Where appropriate, they reconfirm all reservations “and if someone does not answer, we cancel it. Luckily we have no problems occupying that table again and we have very few no shows”. Between the dilemma of forcing the client to advance an amount or charge for not showing up and not canceling the reservation within a reasonable time, Bernils is more in favor of “charging 25% of the average ticket, which is what It would correspond to the lost profits and the profit margin of a restaurant like ours. Surely in restaurants with a lot of demand – his is a success with the public – making payment in advance would reduce the demand ”, he concludes.