Even if restaurateurs are trying to find solutions to the “no-show” phenomenon, the message has not yet reached all customers.
• Also read: A restaurateur will charge a no-show fee
On Tuesday evening, two groups for a total of 19 customers had made reservations at the La Grolla restaurant on the Côte d’Abraham, but had not turned up.
For the team of the small Swiss restaurant, which seats around fifty people, this is a great loss that cannot be made up for.
“That does not make sense. Tonight we had another group of 14 and another of five. It’s not going well. It happens too often and we would like to be able to impose a penalty,” explains manager Olivier Le Hécho.
Significant losses
Despite the denunciations, the examples multiply.
Also, just before the start of the Quebec Winter Carnival, January is not the best month of the year.
“It shows for a small restaurant like ours. We tried calling back to confirm the reservation and the number was out of order. We were pretty fooled,” he adds.
“It looks like the message isn’t getting through. In the United States we take the credit card number. In the hotels here we keep a deposit. I think people are for it. Tonight we could have taken a few tables away from passers-by, but we can’t do that with a reservation,” explains Dave Thivierge, waiter at the same venue.
In January 2023, La Grolla recorded a total of 26 “no shows” for 113 people.
According to the co-founder of the online reservation platform Libro, Jean-Sébastien Pothier, the proportion of “no shows” in restaurants is currently between 18 and 20%.
The phenomenon leads to considerable financial losses for restaurateurs.
“It also affects employees, not just restaurateurs. And that prevents us from giving tables to certain customers,” Yannick Parent, owner of several Quebec restaurants including Bello Ristorante, said recently.
In $5 and $20
Could a “bad customer” blacklist be created and shared between different restaurants? Not yet for legal reasons.
Restaurant owners have been demanding the right to charge a credit card for no-shows for a reservation for several months.
Association Restoration Québec (ARQ) claims the right to charge customers between $5 and $20 for failing to show up after a reservation.
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