No shows threaten to cancel Melbourne’s dining culture
The problem of booked guests failing to turn up to restaurants is growing, placing a financial burden on restaurants that is hard to recover from.
The Orrong Hotel felt the full force of this rudeness on Mother’s Day this year, when 45 people failed to show for a lunch reservation.
Publican and co-owner Scott Connolly told The Age, “Suddenly, we had five or six extra staff we didn’t need to have … and we had significantly more food than we needed.”
Connolly had hired extra staff specifically the day and was left $5000 out of pocket.
2022 has seen a rise in last minute cancellations, which is hurting venues. It is even more noticeable as the number of walk-ins diminish.
In a post COVID world, people prefer to book before they go out: reservation service OpenTable tripled its number of bookings between October 2019 and October 2022.
However, this has also left restaurants vulnerable to no shows.
The Orrong Hotel will now take deposits for large bookings heading into the Christmas period.
“It’s not something we would naturally want to be doing [but] we feel we have to,” he told Age journalist Sophie Aubrey.
“It’s such a busy period, so if we take a booking and have to turn someone else away, and they then suddenly cancel or decide they don’t want to turn up, it’s really going to hurt our bottom line.”
Connolly said he understands that cancellations may happen but urges people to call.
“If you can just call and let us know, we’ll be fine with it,” he said.
“The no-shows without an explanation are the ones we tend to feel a bit more.”
Prince Hotel general manager Jess Harker says people are now lax about cancelling, because there’s no fear of missing out.
However, that leaves staff disengaged and restaurants paying for resoiurces they don’’t need.
“People have learnt to become content with being at home on the weekends – they think they want to go out for oysters and champagne; then they get to the day and say, ‘Actually, I can do this at home,’ ” she said.
A higher cost of living is also having an impact.
Windsor restaurant Mr Miyagi, which pre-pandemic was all walk in, is now two-thirds booking-based and cancellations are a new phenomenon for owner Kristian Klein.
“[Cancellations are] a new thing we have to deal with, but it’s not unexpected,” Klein said. “The more warning we get, the more we can prepare and offer the table to someone else who might want to dine with us.”
Jonathan Jackson - 27-10-22
