Why You Can’t Get a Table for Six at a Restaurant

livemint.com:

Busy restaurants have a message for customers: Come dine with us. Leave your extra friends at home. The eateries want your business, of course.

But with ongoing staffing shortages, you and your gang of eight or even six are just too much work. Large parties, from couples out for date night to Grandma’s 80th birthday, suck up staff time and reduce a restaurant’s ability to turn over tables and make a profit during a period of increasing food costs. You’re kinda noisy too, which annoys other customers.

The pushback is leaving consumers both surprised and frustrated. How do you dine family-style with only half the family? Or celebrate the deal with only a few of the office crew? Some determined diners are now calling reluctant restaurants to personally plead their case, or trying creative (and sneaky) workarounds, such as booking two tables that they then plan to push together. They say they have to get creative, since going through online reservations systems rarely seems to turn up large tables.

Those who do manage to book larger parties say they sometimes must leave additional deposits or preorder—and prepay. Craig Silver, 35, says he has spent hours over recent weeks trying to book a seven-person reservation for his fiancée’s birthday later this month. He’s struck out on most of his top options and was hesitant to pay a $140 deposit that one restaurant wanted for the reservation.

He estimates the table will likely spend more than $80 a person. “I’m surprised at how hard this has been," says Silver, a Chicago-based app developer. “People want to go out and celebrate their birthdays with more than four people." ‘We can, but we won’t’ Groups of six or more made up 8% of the 2023 reservations booked on Resy, a reservations