
How I Became the Most Hated Person in San Francisco for a Day - bmmayer1
http://brianmayer.com/2014/07/how-i-became-the-most-hated-person-in-san-francisco-for-a-day/
======
majormajor
The bigger ethical question seems to me to be that you're taking something the
restaurant chooses to offer as a free convenience, without price-
discrimination, and turning it into a game of "who will pay the most to go to
this restaurant."

Yes, you say you've started out small, with manual phone usage, etc. But then
you go on to say: "So in the interest of ethics and fairness, I want to talk
to restaurants about working with them directly on a better reservation
system." Sounds like you want to scale it, and make money off of it yourself,
after all.

Whereas it seems to me that for high-demand restaurants the manual approach,
exists that way _because_ it won't scale. Anyone can get a reservation, if
they're willing to wait a few weeks, it doesn't matter what they're
willing/able to pay. And once you automate that, how do you keep it from being
abused and effectively turning into a sort of demand tax? In which case the
restaurant could be pocketing that money themselves by simply making the cost
of dining there that high in the first place, but if they didn't, it's
probably because they didn't want to restrict so heavily based on spending
ability. (Well, and because pricing/markets is tricky, and who knows if it
would've been successful initially at a higher price... this part is just
speculation on my end.)

~~~
greenyoda
Making reservations under assumed names (i.e., lying) is also unethical.

 _" So in the interest of ethics and fairness, I want to talk to restaurants
about working with them directly on a better reservation system."_

It's not likely that a restaurant (or anyone else) would want to go into a
business partnership with someone who has clearly demonstrated that they're
willing to lie to make a buck.

Also, as a commenter in the Valleywag article[1] pointed out, it's easy for
restaurants to defeat this: just require diners to show an ID to claim their
reservations.

[1] [http://valleywag.gawker.com/restaurant-reservation-
scalping-...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/restaurant-reservation-scalping-
site-is-everything-wron-1599984423)

~~~
__david__
> Making reservations under assumed names (i.e., lying) is also unethical.

What? As someone who frequently puts in random names for reservations, I fail
to see what is unethical about this…

Why on earth does a random restaurant deserve my real name? The transaction
going on there is on a different level than that.

> It's easy for restaurants to defeat this: just require diners to show an ID
> to claim their reservations.

Again, no. If a restaurant demands ID before they seat me, that is a
restaurant I will never patronize.

~~~
vacri
_What? As someone who frequently puts in random names for reservations, I fail
to see what is unethical about this_

Well, it's not unethical like you're injecting babies with a controversial
drug. It's quite mildly unethical - a reservation is a promise. Promising
something with a fake name is a little unethical - you're asking someone to do
something for you, but offering no avenue of recourse if you don't hold up
your end of the bargain. I think in this case that it's unethical to the same
degree that taking some ballpoints home from work is stealing.

~~~
alialkhatib
If I gave someone my real name for a reservation and then flaked, there's
nothing they could (practically) do about it anyway. The name is just the key
you use to associate yourself with an otherwise secret list of reservations.

------
Mikeb85
This is sleazy. I've worked in restaurants for a long time (mostly fine
dining), and this upsets me.

What he's doing is basically artificially reducing supply, making it harder to
get a 'free' reservation, and then charging for it. Meanwhile, the restaurants
may increase their supply of food based on the increased 'reservations', only
to have them pulled out at the last second, because I highly doubt he's
selling all his reservations.

In the end, everyone will suffer, because once restaurants catch on, they're
either going to eliminate reservations altogether, or start charging for
reservations themselves. Margins are so thin in restaurants, especially in the
high end market, that they'll do anything to stamp out this type of
profiteering.

~~~
kibibu
Couldn't restaurants ask for some form of id for bookings that match the ones
available on RestaurantHop?

~~~
Mikeb85
There's many ways restaurants can weed out this behaviour, but the fact is,
many take reservations purely out of good-will, since customer service is at
the heart of the restaurant business.

This guy is basically destroying all the good-will and the faith that
restaurants have in reservations, and they're not going to put up with his
service.

By the way, what he does already exists, hotel concierges or matchmaking
services will often make reservations on behalf of their clients. But in those
cases, the restaurant establishes a relationship with the concierge which is
mutually beneficial, and trust is created. In cases where this trust is
broken, a restaurant will basically refuse to accept reservations from the
concierge or service who abused the relationship.

------
ggwicz
Don't lie and pretend to be an individual just making a reservation for a
night out on the town.

Maybe this has value, is good or bad, whatever: but be clear with restaurants
that you're a for-profit scalping business making money off their inventory.

The douchiness of scalping reservations can be argued....

But there is not a single logical defense for LYING to the restaurants about
being an individual. Writing a blog post about why you're lying doesn't make
it okay, either.

Be clear with businesses about what you're doing with what THEY broke their
backs to build, and let them opt in if they want. Cool, could be a good
service and help some restaurants out or something.

But stop lying. That _is_ douchey, _is_ unethical in every way with no
justification, and is worthy of all negative media — regardless of how
overkill SF media can be sometimes.

Stop lying.

------
51Cards
My biggest issue with this service is the tables that don't sell.

As mentioned, scalped tickets, while not the most ethical thing, at least put
the listed amount of money into the hands of the artist and incur a financial
risk to the scalper. This potentially ties up a bunch of tables that may never
earn any income and if I was a restaurant finding myself on this service I
would be pretty ticked. The number of people who know to look here for a
reservation is minute, let alone willing to pay for that reservation. I'm
betting that a high number of those tables sat empty tonight and those
restaurants are already out money.

Additionally if the restaurant has done all the work to create such a high
demand for their seating, they should be the ones pocketing the profit off of
it.

At the end he asks to work with this industry but has already begun screwing
them. I'm thinking not the best method to foster co-operation.

~~~
cleverjake
> I'm betting that a high number of those tables sat empty tonight and those
> restaurants are already out money

having worked in restaurants, once someone is more than 10-15 minutes late for
a reservation with no advanced call, the table is free game. Enough people
come stumbling in without a reservation for "hot" restaurants to even notice.

~~~
51Cards
However 10-15 minutes late would also mess up the timing for your next
reservation for that table and starts to cause a log jam through the evening
from what you expected you would be able to seat?

------
andrewfong
IMHO, it's unethical to the extent that there's no value add over the customer
directly reserving a table through the restaurant rather than through you.
Otherwise, you're just engaging in a form of arbitrage. And arbitrage is only
useful to the extent that it informs the supplier that there is excess demand
(in this case, the restaurants are well aware there's excess demand if there's
a line for seats).

That said, having customers have "skin in the game" does add value. But the
ethical way to implement this would be to get the restaurants to consent to
your system (and maybe get a cut). The value of a paid reservation varies by
restaurant, and it should be up to them to decide if it's worth the risk of
pissing off customers, not you.

~~~
teej
Are you kidding? Of course it's useful to the customer! Do you know how
annoying it is to get a reservation at some of these restaurants?

For example - ReservationHop has a 7:45pm reservation next Friday night to
Zero Zero for 4 people. If I try to book the same date/time/party through Open
Table, I only have 6pm and 8:15pm available. If I wanted to book that time I
would have had to call weeks in advance.

I am getting convenience for money. That's a fair trade. And let's not act
like this market didn't exist before. People have been doing this on
craigslist and other sites for years.

~~~
davorak
> Are you kidding? Of course it's useful to the customer!

It is not clear to me that the benefit gained by the reservationhop user out
weighs the negative externality[1] paid by the rest of the restaurant goers.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative)

------
jtmcmc
You are a gigantic douchebag. You are trying to take a tax on top of something
that did not need to be taxed. You are really representative of the problem
with the startup scene and whenever I tirelessly defend it to my numerous
friends throughout the bay I have to go 'see people like this give us a bad
name but most are not like him.'

------
lifeformed
This reminds me of domain squatting. Imagine a world without domain squatters
(or this): if people need a domain/table, they will just ask for it. If it's
being used by someone else already, then they'll try a different
domain/restaurant. The supply/demand is not interfered with by anything else.

Now here comes a service where the only person benefiting is the middle man.
It's worse for the end user, because now they have to pay a fee to get what
could've been theirs normally (or at least would've fairly been someone else's
that was using it legitimately). It's worse for the provider, because now
their user base's spending money has been diminished a little (less for you).

It makes sense that it exists, but it feels like a selfish thing. It's
extracting money from a place that has value, but didn't need tapping.

------
Mikeb85
Also, he claims in his post that Open Table is loathed - not true. Open Table
allows you to see a guest's history, and lets you track good guests and bad
guests. While it's not perfect and it does cost money, Open Table is a decent
solution, hence why so many restaurants use it...

~~~
yo-mf
Actually OpenTable is loathed and I have worked at many restaurants that hated
the fees, the crap software, and feeling they are forced to use it otherwise
they would see a major dropoff in reservations. It should be noted that many
of the hot and trendy places do not even use them because they are fortunate
enough to not have to pay the "OpenTable tax" (their words from a number of
folks). The only thing worse in the minds of most restaurant owners is Yelp.
The "service" they provide truly is extortion.

------
jamesbrownuhh
"Is this even legal? Is it ethical? ... To be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of
time thinking through these questions."

I'd suggest that this is exactly the issue.

------
justizin
Honestly, this is a great example of why some places don't accept reservations
at all, and make you stand for an hour on the street waiting to get in.

~~~
mvid
There are two cases you see at high end restaurants, either that they have no
reservation system at all, or that they keep a card on file and charge you a
preset cancellation price if you don't cancel more than 24/48/72 hours ahead
of time.

Taking no reservations maximizes value for the restaurants, assuming it is hot
enough to never have an empty table. It doesn't help consumers though.

Taking insured reservations causes more work for the restaurant, and generally
the cancellation fee is less than the price of a 2 top with food/alcohol, so
they are potentially missing out on money, but not much. It helps customers
plan in advance though.

------
swang
Consecutive paragraphs beginning with "I understand" is then negated by
following with a paragraph starting with, "But"

~~~
pyre
I understand your general sentiment, but I don't particularly agree with it

------
Zigurd
Scalping is unethical, whether it's a guy on a streetcorner or Ticketmaster.
Some performers go to great lengths to prevent it. How is this guy surprised
that many restaurants find the idea of scalping reservation odious?

------
knofun
Who cares about the reservations, you became my most hated person on the
internet today for your crappy non responsive blog design that doesn't let me
zoom on my phone without covering everything with your sidebar.

~~~
napsterbr
Same here, couldn't read a word.

------
stove
Odd that in such a candid launch article discussing reaction and site traffic
he would skip over things like users created and, more importantly, revenue.
In my opinion, this is a model where restaurant goers can 'pay with their
pocketbooks' so to speak and my impression is that if this guy isn't talking
about revenue- it ain't there and this model isn't going anywhere.

------
Mandatum
This is really just ticket scalping for reservations. Yes, the restaurant
could employ this themselves, however it's not going to benefit the consumer.
Since it's gone mainstream (in terms of I'm a developer in New Zealand and my
restaurateur friend already knows about it) - this is likely going to be
trialed and implemented in a few places if it works out. It's already been
introduced in bars and clubs as "bottle service", unfortunately you were just
the guy who got caught up in the pitchfork-protests.

As a consumer, I'd hate for this to become a thing. Likely it's only going to
work in SF because of the amount of disposable income. In other parts of the
world it may work, but I doubt it would become mainstream.

Don't feel bad, this will blow over. Plenty of people have written and
developed far more sinister applications that would have a far greater impact,
but alas they didn't strike out. Hah, unfortunately for you, you got
publicised pretty fast.

------
mvid
I like to think that this kind of lost income will be the boot that kicks
restaurants out of being so tech-fearing.

------
letstryagain
This is just scalping for restaurant tables. Worse, reservations are free
whereas tickets to events are not.

------
jpeg_hero
So close to parody... but alas not.

Get bent.

------
crdb
2 solutions immediately come to mind for the restaurant:

\- sell tickets instead of taking reservations (Alinea's solution, which saw
no-shows drop from 8% to 0.5%; it used to be done in London in the mid 2000s,
I remember giving my card details over and over again), although that's less
practical for less hot spots, where that's enough friction to switch to a
competitor;

\- ask for ID or a card to check against the name.

How would you cope if either became common practice in your target markets?

------
bryang
It's extortion. Plain and simple.

It's the same as people who buy concert or sport tickets simply for the
resell. Yes it is done legally, but legality is not the same as ethics.

------
swang
Also, if you have to reserve something under a name that is not your own,
perhaps you are doing something restaurants don't want you to do.

------
keehun
Since he is willing to cancel his reservations, why the hate? I get that this
is basically scalping, and I hate scalping. But scalpers don't (or maybe
can't) return their tickets for anyone else to grab them.

What I see here is a service that allows people who didn't plan far enough in
advance to be able to enjoy an experience at a premium (or maybe a fee/penalty
cost) that they otherwise would not have. The customers of this service have
already incurred a penalty of sorts.

I don't see this as (yet) an abusive economic system that disgustingly
inflates prices in some sort of a monopoly-style hierarchy (which ticket
scalping does). There is unprecedented room to badly abuse this system, and I
would hate to see that happen.

However, I think what he did should not incite so much hatred. I personally am
against this sort of thing but that doesn't mean I am going to spread hate.
Ticket scalpers, though...

In another variety, I've seen newspapers/blogs do this sort of advanced-fake-
reservations and give them away as prizes. I'm not sure which is worse.

I would hope that restaurants take measures to make these kinds of things
difficult to pull off. Maybe assess some additional tip amounts if the
reservation name doesn't match anyone in the group, or asking for an ID when
they first enter the restaurant (although I think this would be bad customer
experience).

There's so much room for abuse with solutions that needlessly disrupt the
experience.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Since he is willing to cancel his reservations, why the hate?

Let's say I'm running a 60 seat restaurant, and he has claimed 10 of the seats
for a Friday night. I have bought supplies to cook for 60 guests. If he
doesn't sell his 10 seats, I'm left cooking for 50 guests, and now have excess
food, which is highly perishable, and can make up anywhere from 30 to 50% of
the costs of the dishes I'm serving.

In addition, places that do accept reservations well ahead of time are less
likely to receive 'walk-in' guests, as the reputation of only taking
reservations discourages people from trying their luck.

He advertises last-minute reservations, so he's probably cancelling his
reservations a few hours before service, which is nowhere near enough time to
re-book those tables, given that anyone interested would have simply booked at
a different restaurant.

~~~
__david__
Well, he also claims to only do restaurants with high demand, so if the
restaurant can accept 10 extra walk-ins that night instead of turning them
away then everything works out.

~~~
Mikeb85
A good example of the kind of demand I'm talking about is New Year's Eve.

Every NYE people scramble for reservations. Many people will book at 2-3
restaurants to have options. As a result, everyone who is going on that night
has a reservation, and everyone who doesn't have a reservation goes to a house
party or stays home. You never get walk-ins on NYE (or Valentine's day for
that matter).

Sure, maybe trendy restaurants on a busy strip can make up the difference. And
maybe this is most restaurants in SF, I don't know, I'm not from there.

But if it's a destination restaurant, it often can't make up lost reservations
on such short notice because no one will plan their evening around a chance at
possibly walking in to a restaurant known to only take reservations.

Either way, any success he gets will be short lived, as SF restaurants will
soon start taking CC numbers en-masse, or selling tickets like Alinea. They'll
cut him out of their business, and if he tries dealing with them face-to-face,
he'll be blacklisted. The fact that he's already created such outrage on
Twitter may seem encouraging to him, but he's basically already killed any
chance he has of creating goodwill.

Recently someone in our city tried scamming restaurants for free stuff by
claiming to be a member of the press, was outed on Twitter and swiftly
blacklisted by every restaurant in the community. When you run a business that
has capital costs potentially in the millions for 5-20% margins if you're
lucky, you don't react well to people scamming you.

------
ChuckFrank
I disagree with the dominant sentiment about this being an example of
JerkTech.

If RestaurantHop can prove through the resale of reservations, that there is
value in these reservations, value that the restaurants, with a better pricing
system, could capture, then I think this is great proof of concept for a new
marketplace.

If restaurants have underestimated the value that reservations can capture,
they might have just turned RestaurantHop away without a glance, if he had
approached them with the idea of ticketing reservations, but now that he has
bypassed the restaurants (by calling under a fake name), he proves that the
reservations have value.

Now that it's clear that reservations have value, RestaurantHop can be the
exclusive destination to purchase reservations for a night at a premium
restaurant. Once you make that connection, then pricing strategies can go
wild.

Some examples of that -

1\. Cheap reservations made in advance. 2\. Cheap last minute reservations
when the nights are slow. 3\. Expensive last minute reservations when the
nights are busy. 4\. Expensive reservations that require extra care - large
groups, special dates, etc.

Here's the thing. I don't go to a place that has a long reservation wait time.
Place where they say you need to book months in advance. I simply don't
patronize those places. If there was a marketplace for me to evaluate (from
Free to Expensive) the cost of making such a reservation for me, I would
gladly do that.

I already do that with GoldStar, the ticketing service. Adding premium
restaurant reservations to the mix would be great.

So I say, great start. Hustling to cover the reservation marketplace is going
to be brutal, and if this takes off, competition is going to be fierce, with
essentially no barriers to entry, but if there's an inefficient marketplace
out there, that lacks transparency, and favors the connected, then I say -- go
for it. Let's see how much money is being left on the table.

(That being said, I think Parking Monkey, or Monkey Park, or Park Monkey, or
whatever their name is ... is a true example of JerkTech - stealing from the
commons, and extorting value by behaving badly - I didn't like it when guys on
the street did it, and I don't like it when an app does it.)

(( you can almost imagine BirthdayinthePark Monkey, or Place ontheBeach
Monkey, or SeatontheBart Monkey. All terrible terrible ideas.))

~~~
justizin
"I simply don't patronize those places."

They quite simply don't need or want you to.

~~~
__david__
They certainly don't need him, but why don't they want him?

------
cheshire137
I'm not seeing the problem here. People are willing to trade money to avoid
the time it takes to make a reservation themselves; sounds fine to me.

------
socrates1998
The backlash is hilarious.

People get outraged over nothing.

The hypocrisy is ridiculous. Instead of getting upset at how restaurants treat
their workers, they get mad at some random guy who makes a few reservations at
a few restaurants.

He is taking a bad system and trying to make it better.

Restaurants screw people over all the time, managers and owners take advantage
of minimum wage and our tipping culture to make sure almost everyone who works
at the restaurant are close to or under the poverty line.

You know why people get outraged? Because it is easy and they don't really
have to do anything.

~~~
Zigurd
OR people are frustrated that so many douchenozzles have had their rent-
seeking ("making it better") institutionalized that the opportunity to set
this jackanapes's minor brain fart on fire and watch it burn is too wonderful
to pass up.

~~~
socrates1998
Is it douchey? Yes, but I don't get how people act like they care about this
guy and his very minor website.

Everyone wants to feel like they are a good person, so they put their heads in
the sand for the big stuff like racism and wealth inequality, but they get
"outraged" for this guy and his simple stupid website.

------
codezero
It looks like the flamewar detector knocked this way off the front page really
fast, any chance a mod can check it out?

~~~
dang
It did, but I'm not sure it was wrong. The controversy/substance ratio on this
piece seems pretty high.

~~~
codezero
Yep, though it seems like the vitriol is towards the subject rather than
towards community members, but I didn't read all the threads so I trust you
and the robots :)

------
jtchang
Lots of kneejerk reactions here. I had the same until I thought about it a bit
more. In a free market these reservations should generally go to the highest
bidder.

On the one hand you could view it as the site being a market maker and
injecting liquidity into restaurant reservations. Whether this is ethical or
not is up for debate.

