

The QLess Blog

Why Don’t Some Restaurants Accept Reservations?

Aug 12 By Tim McCune | Categories: Other Industries

Hello world! It's my first blog post. So bear with me... :)

Back to the question at hand. The best answer I can come up with seems to be simply to avoid no-shows:

"Largely because of the all-too-common problem of reservation no-shows (which I'll be writing about soon in my blog), some restaurateurs prefer not to take reservations at all. They accept reservations for large parties as a practical exception, to avoid having to disrupt a significant part of the evening's table rotation." - Epicurean: The Blog

Makes sense. So how many no-shows does the average restaurant encounter?

"The 60-seat restaurant, which opened in 1985, is asking patrons to reconfirm reservations one day ahead of dinner. 'We'd have a 40-percent no-show rate without reconfirmations,' said Nieporent, who calls patrons when they forget." - Nation's Restaurant News

"'It is not unusual for most restaurants, on a given night, to experience a no-show rate of 15%,' says Henny Santo, one of the owners of Sign of the Dove, an upscale restaurant in New York City now moving to a new location." - Cheers

Even at 15%, this definitely sounds like a problem. So what can QLess do to help? In its current form, it can help restaurants who might be on the fence over whether or not their current policy of accepting reservations is the right one, by letting them go reservationless, immediately leading to 15-40% more filled tables, while still providing a great customer experience.

For those restaurants who still want the option of accepting reservations, the upcoming QLess Reservations feature will provide this ability, and still help to dramatically decrease the number of no-shows. Stay tuned...


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