Restaurants seek solution for no-shows, as customers who don't cancel continue to create huge problems
No-shows continue to present problems for restaurants, especially after the year the sector has endured
While 'no-shows' have long been an issue for the hospitality industry, many restaurateurs say they have become even more of a problem in this Covid-ravaged year.
“No-shows continue to be a huge issue in our industry,” says Restaurants Association of Ireland CEO Adrian Cummins, “since reopening on December 4, consumers have been making multiple bookings in numerous establishments and either didn’t turn up at all or if they phoned to cancel, did it very late in the day.”
Restaurants are designed to maximise revenue from every available seat against the huge outgoings that come with working in the Irish hospitality sector. A last minute cancellation or no show of six in a restaurant of a certain size can be the difference between profit or loss for that service.
Pre-bookings guide the purchase of stock and staffing levels for each service. Fail to show and you are already costing the restaurant money. Fail to even cancel and you rule out any chance of finding replacement customers.
Neither is this a recent development. It's not uncommon for some people to have two or three ‘options’ booked for parties of 20 and upwards, then they’ll decide ‘a day or two beforehand’ on one particular restaurant.
“From a restaurant point of view,” says Cummins, “it is a loss of earnings and bad manners by a certain cohort of customers not giving sufficient notice or any notice at all.”
It is certainly bad manners but is it also born of the general public’s ignorance of how a restaurant actually works, many simply seeing a packed restaurant operating at the top of its game as a licence to print money?
“Absolutely,” says Cummins, “People think you just turn up and food ‘appears’ in front of you with no understanding of the purchasing, the work that goes into the dish, the serving, the staff needed. There’s a huge amount of work and outlay behind the scenes along with rent and taxes.
People in Ireland think restaurants are a ticket to easy money — far from it, it’s a very tough business and when it goes wrong, it can go really wrong.” When lockdown ended, one Dublin City centre restaurant had 18 no-shows while Cork restaurant Dockland had two cancellations for parties of six on the opening weekend.
“Both parties said they, ‘forgot to cancel’,” says restaurateur Beth Haughton. “People who do that don’t care. If someone rings up because someone is sick or has a genuine problem, I never have a problem, these things do happen and someone’s had the manners and decency to call.”
Neither is it just an Irish problem, according to Dublin chef/restaurateur Anna Haugh, chef/proprietor of Myrtle restaurant in London: “I love London but people and businesses can be quite faceless and don’t really think about the impact—it’s not like living in a village or town where you might bump into them later in the pub.” It is a glaringly obvious solution: take a booking deposit or credit card details, thus ensuring the consumer knows they will be financially penalised if they cancel after the agreed cancellation time or simply don’t show.
William Barry is national manager for Resdiary, an online booking service with 750 clients in Irish hospitality, including 13 of the 20 Michelin-starred restaurants on the island. As well as offering this protection against late cancellations and no-shows, it also contains a built-in system allowing the customer to confirm or cancel just before the cut-off point.
Ross Lewis’ Michelin-starred Chapter One, in Dublin, was one of the first in Ireland to switch to online booking: “Historically, larger groups are notoriously difficult, booking for maybe 16 but only eight turn up on the night. When booking, if they don’t turn up, we charge the full price for each of the eight unless they give the 48 hours notice. Once you have the credit card details down, it focuses the mind, but if you take bookings with no further commitment from the customer, you’re asking for trouble.”
“In today’s day and age,” says Barry, “there is no need for no-shows. It is so easy to take card details — only a tiny minority don’t have a credit card or a debit card.” If it’s so obvious, what stops all restaurants from adopting the system and ending the practice of no-shows for good?
“We were always very hesitant to do it,” says Gaz Smith, chef/proprietor of the popular Michaels, in Dublin, and a Resdiary user, “because we didn’t want our first hospitality interaction to be a version of ‘we don’t trust you not to turn up’. Unfortunately, we got let down so many times, we had to do it but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the response and people have been very supportive so it was more a problem in our heads. It’s been a gamechanger for us and allows us to focus on different areas of the business.”
Since last Saturday, Beth Haughton in Cork has had further further table cancellations, 19 customers in all. Nobody rang to cancel any of the bookings. After the Christmas rush is over, she intends to take Dockland’s booking system entirely online.
Tim Magee, owner/operator of Host PR and international hospitality industry consulting expert says, “Deposits in restaurants were needed before the pandemic and are needed more than ever now. People have no problem booking a cinema ticket online and then losing the money if they don’t turn up or, if they’re abroad, having to pay a deposit for their favourite restaurant. If enough restaurants can join together and make it the norm, it will be easier to introduce universally.”
Magee would even like to add further options to the booking apps.
“I’d like to see them rate customers against cancellations et cetera the same way as car ride companies do. Five star customers would then get benefits such as priority bookings during busiest booking times and perhaps other incentives such as discounts and special offers, which would also smooth the path for universal introduction and acceptance of these systems, if customers saw them as a real positive.”
