Gaby Huddart, The Guardian, Thursday 11 January 2007
Dinner's off but you should still brace yourself for the bill
Gaby Huddart is editor of the Square Meal restaurant guide.
Restaurant dining isn't cheap these days. Indeed, getting change out of £40 for drinks and dinner is a pretty mean challenge in the noughties. So, this week's widely reported story that many of the nation's best eateries are insisting on credit card numbers at the time of booking and, unless given plenty of notice of cancellation, charge a hefty fee for a no-show seems outrageous. A downright rip-off, in fact.
The three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray charges £80 per person for cancellations with less than two days' notice. At the two-Michelin-starred Le Gavroche, in London, the charge is £60 per head for no-shows, with Le Pont de la Tour, The Square and Bentley's among the capital's other restaurants to be named and shamed. Surely they should be red-faced about such hard-to-swallow policies?
So I used to think when I first became aware of the practice two or three years ago. After all, having to pay £80 a head if you are taken ill on the day your table is booked adds insult to injury. But my opinion has changed and my sympathies now lie with the restaurateurs forced to levy cancellation fees in an extremely competitive market. Having spoken to many about why they are doing this, I can confidently say that it is not motivated by greed or with a view to making a fast buck.
All restaurateurs want is full dining rooms and they have been forced into this situation by people with bad manners who see fit to make several bookings for lunch or dinner, only to decide on the day which one they fancy eating at - and neglecting to cancel the others. It only takes a couple of empty tables for a restaurant's profit for a day to be turned into a loss. Admittedly, a number of celebrated establishments, including The Ivy, The Wolseley and the River Cafe, charge no cancellation fees but their high turnover - several hundred diners daily - softens the impact of no-shows. In contrast, with a maximum of only 46 diners per service, for instance, it wouldn't take many unexpectedly empty seats for the Fat Duck to feel the pinch.
We all accept when we buy theatre, gig, airline or non-flexible train tickets that we forfeit the cost if we don't show up, so why should restaurants be different? In any case, those who call a restaurant at short notice with a genuine illness or catastrophe to report will often find a compassionate ear and the cancellation fee waived. Not such a nasty taste in the mouth after all. |
