
Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF - RonileSille13
https://diogomonica.com/bot-wars-the-arms-race-of-restaurant-reservations-in-sf/
======
rndmize
Soon - "Auction Sniper now supports urbanspoon! First 3 reservations are
free!"

There's something frustrating about reading this. Perhaps its that a
technological advancement that was supposed to make life easier is being
capitalized on by a small group of technically competent people, shutting out
the average user.

I was thinking of going to PAX next year a few hours ago and decided to do a
bit of research. For this year, the 4 day tickets apparently sold out in 23
minutes, and the rest within 5 hours. I'm having a hard time imagining how its
going to be possible for anyone to get some this coming year without a bot.

~~~
spellboots
Yes, in todays technological society, people who understand technology have
advantages. I don't see why that is surprising, given the website you're
commenting on.

Ultimately this is not about technology, it's about economics. Surely the
restaurant should raise their prices until not enough people want to book 2
months in advance to make bots and make this an issue. Or PAX should raise
their prices so they don't sell out in 23 minutes but still sell all their
tickets before the show. Or either business should increase their capacity. Or
perhaps they are capitalising on the fact that they are oversubscribed as some
kind of marketing device. Either way, any time there is a limited supply of
something people are going to figure out ways to get some, and if the limited
supply is available on the web, people who understand the web will have an
advantage.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
"Just raise the price" is an appropriate response to demand for a commodity,
but it's an inappropriate response to these scenarios.

For example: PAX is trying to build a community event. The target demographic
is not "wealthy people who love games", it's "people who love games" Changing
the price results in a different convention.

Similarly, a popular $20 restaurant can't double their prices to keep demand
manageable, because a great $20 dinner that costs $40 will reduce the
perceived _quality_ of the restaurant.

~~~
PeterisP
If PAX or anyone else wants to intentionally price something so that the
demand is larger than available supply, then in any case the "effective price"
will be raised so that supply matches the demand.

In effect, part of the "effective price" will be the monetary cost, and the
other part of the price will be wasted time/emotions/connections/whatever that
discrimiminates those who get the ticket from those who don't. This is basic,
well researched economics, with plenty of real life examples in various
countries, regimes and industries.

The common options include:

a) $x + significant time spent waiting in line - some wait in line and get
nothing; some value their time a lot and don't attempt buying.

b) $x goes to the original supplier, $y goes to scalpers/touts/your employee
bribes - the stuff gets sold at money market price, but someone else gets the
difference;

c) lottery - either intentional lottery, where everybody has a chance of
getting a ticket for $x despite that it's market worth is >$x; or an
unintentional lottery, where random factors (showing up at the right time,
getting a reservation that someone else cancelled) determine if you can or
cannot get the ticket. In both cases, the "buyer" might be motivated to resell
it if possible, since it's possible that he paid $20, he wouldn't go if it
cost $100, but someone else wants to pay $100, so ...

d) (ab)use of advantages - political connections, bots, whatever; you buy at
$x and sell at the market price.

In any case, (most) buyers don't get the intended effect of cheaper price; but
the seller loses out. Only the middlemen benefit, without adding value. (In
one sense, they add back the value that the seller reduced by mispricing)

I've seen what happens in USSR when the majority of economy functions this way
- trust me, in most cases raising the price is actually the appropriate
response; because otherwise there is so effing large amounts of
effort&resources that is wasted - the seller gets $x, but the buyer anyway
spends "market price" of $3x to compete with other buyers by giving $x of cash
and $2x of wasted, unproductive effort.

~~~
resu_nimda
It seems to me that the effective price would never fully bring it up to the
money market level, and that difference is what makes it worthwhile to choose
that strategy?

In the example of (a), there is no middleman, and the set of buyers becomes
biased toward those who are dedicated over those with more money, because they
intentionally distributed the effective price over multiple...payment channels
(? I'm not much of an economist). Edit: actually there is a middleman; I
recall the Wii launch, where I knew a guy who waited in line just to sell them
on eBay. But still, there are "true fans" waiting who might be priced out at
market value.

In the lottery style where tickets go on sale at x time and it's a free-for-
all, some significant percentage of this round of sales will go to people that
"deserve" them and get to enjoy a reasonable price with negligible non-
monetary cost. Yes there will be some money lost to scalpers, but this can be
reduced by forcing resellers into an official exchange channel where the
original seller gets a cut.

Burning Man is an event where demand has exploded over the past few years and
the supply cannot keep up. The organizers are also very concerned about
getting the right people the tickets without jacking up the price. They have
evolved a somewhat complex multi-pronged approach with lotteries, high-price
presales, and a homegrown exchange system (STEP), where I believe they mandate
reselling at face value.

edit: On second thought, I have neglected the cost of the people who expend
time/effort and miss out completely. But, I still think there are benefits to
pricing below market value with a sufficiently robust strategy.

------
jbigelow76
You folks don't actually think that opentable/urban spoon reservation
availability is representative of a restaurant's entire table inventory on a
given night do you? Pick up a phone (dirty little secret, restaurants segment
customers too).

~~~
Aloisius
Restaurants typically hold back inventory from online reservation systems for
two reasons. They either think they can fill seats and they rather not pay the
per cover fees OT and UrbanSpoon charge or they want to hold seats for walk-
ins. Well three if you count timing seating to keep the front of the house and
kitchen from being overloaded.

State Bird Provisions however has so much demand that there is a line for
walk-ins hoping for a cancellation an hour before the restaurant opens and
they appear to not actually hold back much (any?) inventory specifically for
walk-ins.

But generally speaking yes, you will often be able to call a restaurant and
get a table or possibly walk in even when their online reservation system
shows up as full.

Also, you can also put yourself on a waitlist at many restaurants. If someone
calls to cancel, before they release the reservation back to the online
system, they'll go through their waitlist and call and ask if you want it
instead.

~~~
tomkarlo
From their site: "We welcome walk-ins on a first-come, first-served basis and
set aside about a third of our seats for those guests every night, including
our chef’s counter and several tables in the dining room. "

~~~
zpao
I tried that once, very shortly after open on a Wednesday. The wait was 2-3
hours. It's a popular place.

------
mozboz
I'd suggest that this effect is a somewhat superficial expression of the
deeply rooted problem of people in urban situations broadly losing their
personal connections with their own expressions of creativity and art,
primarily through doing work that they are not engaged with in a deep,
meaningful sense.

Perhaps:

\- People in certain modern, urban situations crave certain types of creative
expression that seem to be very hard to find in these environments.

\- Social patterns place a high value on being seen to have had an experience,
that provide a reward similar to being the artist.

\- People capable of producing these artistic experiences are initially
perhaps not so interested in managing the people who are the recipients of
their creativity - they are more interested in creation.

\- Once money and/or fame becomes involved, the artists are unlikely to widely
share the skills that lead to the creativity arising, are motivated to protect
methods of production, fetishize the product and create strong brands.

These factors together create this 'hipster' effect where small points of
creativity are heavily focussed on and take a long time to replicate.

I'd hypothesize that this situation would go away if people were broadly
connecting with meaningful, personal creative pursuits. Or, if the artists
flipped their model once they smelled success and were motivated to share
everything they were doing, allowing the experience to be rapidly replicated.

~~~
xentronium
Wrong thread?

------
PhasmaFelis
I love how everyone _else_ who fights for reservations is a filthy hipster,
while the author is merely a humble gourmand.

~~~
joezydeco
Great quote from a parallel discussion on Metafilter:

 _" A hipster is someone who enjoys the things I do, but in ways I disapprove
of"_

------
Stupendous
Given their popularity, why doesn't this restaurant just get rid of the
reservation system altogether? A lot of the popular/trendy/hipster magnet
places here do this since it saves hassle and creates a certain allure when
lines are out the door for a table.

~~~
Aloisius
Given this place has a line outside of it well before it opens on the off
chance someone cancels, removing reservations would mean _everyone_ would have
to wait for a table.

I can't think of a worse customer experience than taking someone on a date,
waiting in a congested line outside at night for 45 minutes only to be told
that there are no tables available.

Not getting a reservation on the other hand just means that I can just go
somewhere else.

------
lars512
Perhaps the restaurant should raise its prices.

~~~
tome
Indeed this I do not understand, nor do I understand why bands sell tickets so
cheaply when they can be resold by touts outside the door for many times that
price.

~~~
icebraining
_Kid Rock is tired of scalpers taking tickets away from his biggest fans._

 _One way to stop that: Raise ticket prices. If Kid Rock charged more for his
tickets, scalpers wouldn 't be able to sell them at such a big markup._

 _But Kid Rock doesn 't want to raise prices._

 _" I don't want to break you by coming to see me, " he says. "I want to make
as much money as I can, but I don't need to drive around in a tinted down
Rolls-Royce or Maybach and hide from people because I felt like I ripped them
off."_

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-
rock...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock-takes-
on-the-scalpers)

~~~
joezydeco
That interview was a great summary of what's going on in the industry. Kid
Rock realizes that keeping his die-hard fans happy works out better for him on
the tour circuit, since they'll spend more on t-shirts and other things while
they're at the show. If they have to pay $400 for a ticket, there's no budget
left for a high-margin souvenir.

It's the internet age as well and he realizes that. The moment he tries to
charge a market price for every ticket, he starts eroding his fan base.

------
sien
This is remarkable.

Concert tickets are also being bought this way by bots for scalpers.

Ebay sniper bots are commonly used.

High Frequency trading is the high end this.

Perhaps it is unavoidable, perhaps other means for selling things online
should be sought out, text messages with semantic replies required or
something?

~~~
namdnay
I really don't get the outrage against scalpers. They're just buying commodity
futures, taking a bet on the future value of the tickets. If the value goes
up, they make a profit, if the band suddenly become unpopular or whatever they
lose.

We're in a capitalist system, the price you pay the scalpers is the "real"
price of the concert: it's the law of supply-and-demand.

Now, if scalpers win every time, this is an issue with the original ticket
sellers, not the scalpers!

If Shell started selling petrol at half standard price and some guy comes
round to fill up a tank and then sell it to people at 95% standard price,
that's Shell's mistake, not evil behaviour on his part.

~~~
mgkimsal
To the average fan, the comparison between a ticket to see Act X on a specific
date in their town is nowhere near the same as pork bellies or orange juice.
They're called 'commodities' because they're interchangeable. Tickets are
extremely specific to a single date and location and act.

~~~
namdnay
Good point, I guess tickets would be "infungible commodities"... But the fact
that you can take market bets on them doesn't change

------
jakozaur
Few years ago I wrote sth similar for registering to popular courses at my
university. A lot of CS students gets an edge doing that.

Moreover, I have also participated in a few lotteries for various things (e.g.
Half Dome permit), but did that completely by the book.

A few things that help make system fair (TM):

\- price them right, maybe even charge a bit premium for reservation vs. walk-
ins

\- make cancelation non-free and charge at reservation time, even a few
dollars prevents spurious reservations "just in case"

\- have a waiting list, if there is a cancellation, you can automatically sell
it to someone else

\- do some load management, e.g. weekend prices, discounts...

------
Bjorkbat
I bet this bot race is doing a great deal to improve relations between San
Francisco's tech population and...well, everyone else in SF.

------
westicle
If an establishment wants to give non-techies the opportunity to attend, yet
remain "accessible" to those without piles of money, there are a few
solutions.

1\. Don't take reservations.

My favourite restaurant operates on this basis. On a Friday or Saturday night
you will queue for up to an hour for a table. If you prefer to avoid peak
hour, there is rarely any queue for lunch. I've eaten there over 100 times and
I still don't begrudge the time spent in the queue.

2\. Run a lottery

Popular theatrical productions are great at this. If you don't want to book
months ahead (or can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars), Book of Mormon
offers a ticket lottery before every show. Just show up at the theatre and
enter for your chance to win one of 21 discounted, front-row tickets.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting that the establishment in the OP wants to let
the poor and/or technological illiterate to attend. However other places have
managed to do so without hurting their brand.

~~~
tomjen3
If I can't be sure to get a table/ticket I may come, but I am not bringing a
date or a friend and risking ruining our evening.

------
lifeisstillgood
But surely this is a good thing - people will have to take part in an auction
for a table.

Want to eat at $POPULARRESTAURANT - you set a bid min and max and off you go.

Its allocating scarce resource at the most efficient level.

~~~
fusiongyro
It's possible that your patrons are not interested in bidding, or otherwise
participating in libertarian economic fetishism.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Have you _seen_ people trying to get in for a top NY restaurant - they will
participate in _any_ fetishism :-)

------
pyoung
Seems like Urbanspoon should be using some sort of scraping counter measures
to make things a little more fair. I sent them an e-mail through their contact
form (of course I wouldn't be suprised if those are sent straight to the
trash/spam folder).

Also, is scraping legal? I would imagine, at the very least, the OP and others
are violating the TOS. I have written a few scripts of my own for fun, but I
would be careful about bragging about it on a public blog.

~~~
pyoung
Well, looks like they do actually respond to the contact form, got an e-mail
from them a few moments ago saying they were "aware of the situation".
Although, looks like this blog has been picked up by some mainstream news
outlets, who have been getting comments from Urbanspoon:

[http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2013/07/25/are-
automate...](http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2013/07/25/are-automated-
bots-are-making-hot-online-reservations-impossible/)

------
zaroth
Since you can't RESELL your reservation, I think the answer is for the
restaurant to black list exactly one sniper, maybe just for one year, and
publicize doing so.

Everyone else, who has been fighting to get a reservation for months the old
fashion way, will not decry your loss.

And I doubt very much you would risk getting blacklisted for sniping
reservations off their site, since you appear to love the restaurant so much.

~~~
rorrr2
If you can't resell your reservation, then what's the point of the bots?

~~~
dasmoth
Some of the bot-herders probably just want to eat there themselves. After all,
the author wrote his bot because he wanted a table.

------
qq66
The people saying "raise the prices" don't realize that the scarcity of the
restaurant is an asset in itself. Restaurants become famous for being
impossible to get a table at. The chef is more respected by his or her peers
and the media. Newspapers write articles about the restaurant. The
restaurant's cookbook starts selling more copies on Amazon. The chef is
invited to an interview on Food Network. None of these things happen if they
raise the prices until there's no excess demand.

Ferrari also has a long-standing policy of manufacturing "one fewer car than
the market demands."

------
raarky
In London, a "no reservations" system seems to be happening more and more with
popular trendy/hip establishments.

And it seems to work.

Places like Burger & Lobster or Meat Liquor usually have very long queues at
prime times.

~~~
jlgreco
Does anybody but the establishment really prefer such a system though? Setting
aside time in my evening itinerary for queueing is not my idea of ideal.

Probably only a matter of time until a side-business of people who are willing
to wait in lines for you emerges.

~~~
raarky
As a customer it can definitely be annoying to experience at times. My
tolerance seems to vary depending on the wait times and food expectations.

A perceived upshot is that the restaurant must put an emphasis on quality at
reasonable prices, otherwise they won't draw those crowds and I'm definitely
not going to wait for a crappy meal.

However, the "no reservation" method itself seems to help draw crowds too.
Kind of like the lines outside a night club seem to draw people. Throw in a
bit of edgy branding with some cool marketing and it pulls well - having an
"image" works.

Queuing is a bit of a cultural thing/expectation over here. Having someone cut
in line can be a huge no no. If someone bought their way into the queue, I
could very well see it causing some highly vocal responses. But I'm sure there
are people out there trying it out.

------
linuxhansl
Reminds of the tickets to "walk" up Half Dome (Yosemite park). After some
folks died a few years back, the number of folks is limited and you have to
get a ticket.

 _All_ tickets for the year are gone on the first day they become available
and then lo and behold you can suddenly buy the tickets (for a considerable
markup) elsewhere. The folks scooping up the tickets like this are parasites.
The solution is to limit the number of tickets per person or to disallow
reselling.

(Haven't tried for a while out of frustration, might be different now)

I know, slightly tangential to the article.

------
robk
How are the bot owners flipping these reservations? I imagine there must be
some commercial value via secondary market (or direct to concierges, offline),
as bot-writers probably aren't actually using all these reservations
themselves (or their friends). The more sane solution is to require full name
when booking and ask for ID at the door. A name change has to be manually
handled by the restaurant or would require rebooking. That would stop
transfers and any market for these bookings.

~~~
obelos
It could be that a few savvy people always want a reservation or two on deck.
They queue up reservations, say one table per week for two months. When that
week comes up, if they don't want the table they cancel it. If they do end up
having a need for it, how cool does it look to be able to tell your date that
you can get a table at their favorite hot restaurant _tomorrow_?

------
wil421
The website is unreadable on a mobile device. I can't zoom out.

~~~
horacio
It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a restaurant in possession of a
good name, must be in want of a good web designer.

------
wdr1
Having worked at Ticketmaster for a few years, the first thing that came to
mind was the similarities in automated ticket-buying bots.

Thing is, is there really that much of an arbitrage opportunity with
restaurant reservations? Is there a place I can go purchase restaurant
reservations?

------
otterley
My experience with restaurants is that if one is too popular, just wait a
little while. Eventually the mob's attention will turn to the next heretofore-
undiscovered gem, and you'll find it's much easier to finally check out the
previous one.

------
mathattack
I don't understand why they don't do authentication to remove the bots if this
really matters.

If it doesn't matter, they should raise prices.

This is an issue in NYC. Some $300/night restaurants have you hyperclicking
the moment the reservations open up.

------
pron
Priceless! When I studied history I learned how to recognize a significant
historical document, and this definitely qualifies as one. I wonder what
historians reading this two-hundred years from now would think of our culture.

------
franz12
Next step: high frequency trading techniques applied to reservation making

~~~
pyoung
Ahh, that would be hilarious. Urbanspoon should open up a co-location server
rack and charge people a monthly fee to set up their servers there.

------
Ecio78
just as information, I use the free service
[http://www.changedetection.com/](http://www.changedetection.com/) to send me
email when webpages change (i.e. jobs opportunities). Unfortunately you can't
automate the procedure of logging in and/or posting to searches, and I think
the scheduling is once-a-day, so it wouldn't have been very useful for the OP
cron case

------
Eva_Peron
Cool concept. Wonder if he could write a script to land a reservation at
Dorsia. I think that might be asking a bit much, even for a bot.

------
hmottestad
A perfect place to implement a captcha.

~~~
tlrobinson
Or the equivalent of a shadow ban. Once a bot is detected, always return "no
reservations available".

------
btbuildem
Next step in escalation: make a bot that books with fake names, sell primo
reservations on Craigslist.

------
Havoc
Next week: Co-location

------
iblaine
After reading that I want 10 mins of my life back.

------
pclark
tangential but has anyone been to state bird provisions? I keep meaning to go,
but don't because of the reservation saga.

------
beaker52
Captcha?

~~~
pornel
I'd try:

\- detect obvious bots (e.g. clients requesting form without loading CSS or JS
or filling it in instantly), suspicious IPs (EC2, VPS hosting) and release
smaller batch of seats to them (don't deny completely in case of false
positive).

\- create waiting list and give reservations randomly to people on the list
(while the list can be spammed as well, humans would still have better chance
than reserving between 4:00:00 and 4:00:01). Also bot authors would have to be
creative to avoid creating easy to spot patterns of names/times in the list.

------
coin
Site renders horribly on an ipad

------
michaelochurch
Do people actually use "foodie" unironically? I thought that was something
people invented to stereotype suburbanites who'd caught on to "gourmet"
meaning absolutely nothing; I didn't know until now that people actually
called themselves "foodies". Wow, it's a weird world out there.

~~~
dasmoth
It's certainly pretty common in the UK. Seems much less linguistically dubious
than "gastropub".

(Why do "suburbanites" seem to get so much stick nowadays?)

------
zalew
_> This means that I'm bound to compete for reservations at good restaurants
with the the hipsters_

if this restaurant is so popular, isn't it too mainstream for hipsters?
/philosoraptor

~~~
bpodgursky
Please for the love of god keep the shitty memes on reddit.

~~~
zalew
sorry, forgot to apply the stick up my this morning, so I couldn't appreciate
the seriousness of foodie reservations in sf.

~~~
moheeb
Non-hipster technique would have included invoking Yogi Berra and his "
_Nobody goes there anymore. It 's too crowded._" line.

