Restaurants blacklist no-show diners

Restaurants around Australia are finally sending a message to diners who make booking and fail to turn up.

They’re blacklisting them.

For good reason too.

It is estimated that the growing number of no-show customers actually cost restaurants an average $1100 each this year.

Booking service Dimmi has research showing no-shows cost its 426 member restaurants in WA about $500,000 in lost revenue between January and August.

Perth restaurateur Lloyd Smith, the co-owner of Clarences in Mt Lawley, said no-shows were hitting these small businesses hard.

The reserved tables were often left empty in peak periods costing the diner money.

He has a simple rule: he puts diners on the Dimmi blacklist the second time they fail to keep a reservation.

And it seems many of them are shameless.

As he tells it, some actually book multiple venues at once.

So when he calls them to see why they are late, they answer their phone from another restaurant.

“We try to be as fair as possible — we just ask people to call us if they can’t make it,” Mr Smith told news.com.au.

Some restaurants are going one step further in dealing with the problem.

C Restaurant in the Perth CBD, Frasers in Kings Park and Coco’s in South Perth now charge $25 a person for big groups that do not turn up. The no-show fee covers the high cost of big reservations. That can include wages for extra staff put on specifically to cater to the group.

Jeremy Cariss, the owner of Bistro Felix in Subiaco, says a growing number of restaurants had adopting a non-booking policy to avoid the problem of no-show customers. That is to say, they are accepting walk-in customers only.

“We try to be as fair as possible — we just ask people to call us if they can’t make it,” Mr Cariss told news.com.au.

Once someone is blacklisted, they can’t make an online booking through Dimmi for that particular restaurant for one year. Indeed, when a blacklisted person attempts a phone booking at the restaurant, an alert comes up.

by Leon Gettler, September 5^th 2017