In mid-April, news broke that a judge had ruled in favor of the Amelia restaurant in Sant Sebastià for charging 170 euros to each of the three diners who had not shown up to eat at the restaurant despite having a reservation. This is a very common practice in award-winning restaurants such as Amelia, with two Michelin stars, or when booking a hotel, but until recently it was less so in the restaurants where most of us mortals go.
Losses dragged down by the pandemic and rising product costs due to inflation and the war in Ukraine have made it harder for restaurants to make ends meet without raising menu and a la carte prices – by a lot. Currently, and for this reason, a table that is not occupied at the last minute because of a customer who does not give notice has ceased to be simply bad manners, which could be perfectly ignored, to become a stab in the account of results According to some studies, the no-show percentage ranges between 20 and 30%.
Because of this, restaurateurs are less and less afraid to ask for the card and charge those who do not show up. Most of those who appear in this report insist on the need to educate diners on the fact that, just as no one thinks that if, for whatever reason, they cannot go to a concert or the theater, they will not recover their money, the most logical thing is that they can charge an amount for what they stop earning. However, they are flexible and, if they are warned in time, they understand that it is normal not to punish anyone.
The Hisop restaurant, in Barcelona and with a Michelin star, had resisted asking for the card to guarantee the reservation and penalize customers who did not show up, but finally the owner, the chef Oriol Ivern, has decided to take the step "We didn't have many no-shows and we believed that the risk that there would be people who were put off by having to leave the card was higher than the benefit of asking for it and charging the few who didn't come".
But it had gotten worse, especially on Friday nights and Saturdays. "Right now for any of these days you need to book eight weeks in advance to get a table. And we found that more than half of the reservations ended up being cancelled," he says.
Ivern understands that this increase in cancellations has precisely to do with the fact that you have to book so far in advance. Two months later, unforeseen events may arise that make it impossible to visit the restaurant. "For this reason, for ten days we have been asking for the card and, only for the people who do not notify and do not sell, we charge them 60 euros each". This amount "corresponds to what we stop earning. We are not charging the cost of the food that we stop serving and that we can serve to someone else", explains Ivern.
They only do this for weekend and weekday bookings for tables of five or more people. "The capacity of our place is 20 people. So a table of five is 25% of the occupation. So far we haven't had to charge anyone", adds this cook.
Santi Colominas had a restaurant in Barcelona that could seat 35 people. "Many Friday nights I had 35 reservations and ended up giving dinner to five or six diners," he says. Then he opened the restaurant Toc al Mar, on the beach of Aiguablava (Begur). "We serve 300 people at each service and there were 80 people who did not show up". Since, for two years, they ask for a credit card and charge 10 euros per diner who does not notify and does not go to the restaurant, there is no problem.
"The first time we did it was a St. John's night. We had 300 reservations and we gave dinner to 300 people", he says. Now, there are very few people who don't come or don't give notice," he adds.
Currently, Toc al Mar incurs "between 4,000 and 5,000 euros a year in penalties. But that's because we have a lot of volume." In any case, Colominas is not at all inflexible. "We keep track of the reservations and reconfirm them all. The limit to cancel it without penalty is 12 hours, but if someone gives 30 minutes' notice, we cancel the reservation and do not charge them anything." This chef assures that "from the first moment the customers agreed to leave the card without problems".
Adelf Morales, owner of the Topik restaurant in Barcelona, believes that "customers need to be educated", which is why he will soon start asking for credit cards. In his case, he even studies the option of asking for a pay and sign. "We have no choice, because there are very ill-educated people and if we don't do it out of fear, many of us will end up closing. It can't be that they reserve a table for you, don't come, don't give notice and then you see that they are in another place". He was already doing it with the "menus per order, for which we asked for the payment of 50% in advance by Bizum 24 hours before". He is also inflexible with latecomers. "Those who arrive 15 minutes late, are left without a table."
Morales believes that there are customers who do not understand "the amount of fixed expenses of a restaurant and that part of these costs are those that are tried to be recovered by applying these penalties, not the food that we stop serving".
Ignasi Camps and Laia Cano manage Ca l'Ignasi, in Cantonigròs (Osona). They have resisted it, but they can't anymore. "We don't work as many days as a restaurant in Barcelona can. Throughout the year there are just over 140 days; weekends and bridges. That's why no-shows have a big impact", explains Camps.
The situation is especially serious during the bridges, "when everyone leaves and the reservations fill the restaurant. The problem is that many people don't know what kind of restaurant we are and, when they see the menu or find out a little, they leave or simply don't come. If this happens to you with a table of five, 25% of the billing for that service is charged", he adds.
So this couple has decided to start asking for the credit card, and although they have not yet decided how much they will charge, they are looking into the possibility of "not keeping the money, but keeping it so that client has it if he decides to return ".
Lluís Bernils is the second generation at the head of El Celler de Matadepera, which he currently runs with his two sons. They have never asked for a card and have no intention of doing so, but they understand that there are restaurants that do. "Each restaurant is a world and must know its clientele. We have loyal customers, we know them and asking for a credit card would bring us problems".
They reconfirm all the reservations "and, if someone doesn't answer, we cancel it. Luckily we have no problems doing another one and we have very few no-shows." Between the choice of forcing the client to advance an amount or charge a fee for not showing up without canceling the reservation, Bernils is more in favor of "charging a 25% of the average ticket, which is the which would correspond to the discontinued profit and the profit margin of a restaurant like ours. In restaurants with a lot of demand - his is very successful -, making people pay in advance is sure to reduce demand", he concludes.
