Buying Restaurant Reservations

Nowhere is the competition for reservations at the best restaurants more cutthroat than in New York City, where the hottest eateries are often booked solid for months. Indeed, how many times have we here at Harden tried to get a table at Carbone for 8:30 on a Tuesday three weeks ahead of time, only to be told that our only options are either 5:30 or 10:30? Well, it’s 2015, and in today’s world everything is for sale online–including restaurant reservations. A host of new apps now allow diners to pay a premium in order to get into the best restaurants at the the last minute–all with a few taps on a screen. A few of these apps, like Resy and Zurvu, cooperate with the restaurants whose reservations that they sell. In return for splitting the profits–reservations typically range from $10 to $50–the restaurants grants app users access to the best tables. Other apps, like Shout, allow diners to sell their reservations on an open marketplace–often in the form of an auction–and charge whatever fee that they may like. Most of the reservations on Shout are priced rather high, but as the reservation gets closer and close the prices often drop. A friend of ours recently dined at Sushi Nakazawa for $15, after buying the reservation three hours ahead of time. Of course, not every reservation ends up reasonably priced–just last week a reservation at the red hot Polo Bar was being hawked on Shout for $225 with less than an hour before the dinner. While many people are against this new trend in the world of fashionable restaurants, Harden staunchly supports the new direction the in which the reservation game is headed–if only because it will make dining at Carbone that much easier!