- The next time you book a restaurant reservation, you also may have to pay a deposit.
- Certain restaurants are requiring customers to pay an up-front fee to crack down on no-shows.
Tipping culture isn't the only aspect of dining out that's changing.
More restaurants are now asking for cash deposits in order to reserve tables, Eater reported. The preemptive payments are meant to prevent people from not showing up to their reservations, and they differ from no-show fees, which are penalties that many restaurants enforce on diners after they have ghosted their reservations.
No-shows for restaurant reservations aren't new. In 2021, online reservation service OpenTable found 28% of Americans said they'd ghosted a restaurant reservation in the last year.
In 2022, the company launched a deposits feature on its reservation platform that allows restaurants to require payments with each booking. Restaurants on the platform choose whether to enforce the deposit on all reservations or on specific occasions, such as bookings for big parties or during peak hours a spokesperson for OpenTable said in an email to Insider.
Reservation deposits vary in price and application, and the restaurants Insider spoke with said they either refund the upfront payment or deduct it from the final bill if the diner shows. Some eateries charge a flat deposit on a reservation, while others require money for each reserved seat.
JC Myska, general manager at Kintsugi Omakase in Manhattan, said his luxury restaurant's $35-per-person reservation deposit is vital for the eatery, which has only 10 seats.
Pearl Street Caviar, an importer and distributor of caviar in Brooklyn, New York, has a cafe that began implementing a blanket $10 deposit for reservations this spring to battle patrons ghosting reservations. Founder Craig Page said that the rate of no-shows has dropped significantly since the rollout of the charge, which gets deducted from the final bill.
"We have very few seats, and we plan and staff significantly around reservations," Page said. "So when people don't show up, it's not a disaster, it's just a bummer."
For other restaurants, no-shows can be killer. The 2021 OpenTable analysis looked at Blackfish, a 40-seat restaurant in Philadelphia, and found that if just six people did not show up, it would lose 5% of its income — or a typical restaurant's profit margin.
"Restaurants operate on razor thin profit margins and simply can't afford last-minute cancellations and no-shows," the OpenTable spokesperson said.
In 2020, acclaimed chefs called out diners who did not show up for reservations, with Michelin-star chef Tom Kerridge saying such customers endangered jobs.
While Page said Pearl Street Caviar's customers aren't shocked by the charge and that any confusion is usually cleared up, some diners have voiced their displeasure about reservation deposits online.
A Yelp user left a positive review for the New York City restaurant Monkey Bar, but said her "only complaint" was the "non-refundable fee to make the reservation on resy."
Monkey Bar did not respond to Insider's request for comment, but the restaurant's website says there is a $2.50 fee charged per person for reservations made online.
In July, one Reddit user fretted over "the principle of a nonrefundable deposit for making a reservation online."
"This alone probably wouldn't discourage me from booking a table at a place I really want to try, but it could definitely push me towards other options if I'm on the fence," they wrote.