back
5 comments
This is a great idea.

I'm a little supprised booking platforms aren't doing enough to handle this. It feels like it could be solvable if the platform got told about no-shows you could at the very least blacklist that email address (or require payment upfront for them) or set a bit that previous customers don't pay a deposit.

Of course this is also a classic application for ML, if you track enough metadata and know about no-shows then I imagine you get to squash 99% of this problem, and if the restaurant gives you the ability to require a deposit then just shove any users with a bad score down that path rather than reject entirely.

Good! Last minute cancellations are total killers for restaurants.
It's not completely clear to me why the solution to restaurant reservation squatting is imposing a minimum dinner order while people are there.

My (hot) take is that these restaurants want to squeeze their customers more and are using a common customer complaint ("restaurant reservations are hard to get") to get buy-in for the change.

I wouldn't go to a restaurant with anti-consumer practices like this.

I think you missed the part where have to pay the minmum spend value up front when they book the reservation, and use that as a credit when they arrive for the reservation for dinner.