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Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

I can speak to this! I was "canceled" in 2014...before it was cool...for doing exactly this[0]

A couple reasons restaurants don't do this:

1) Loss of quality control over customer experience. For example they provide a $100 dinner, but the client expects a $200 dinner. That creates bad experience

2) Desire to maintain accessibility on price point (same reasons artists don't charge more for tickets) and perceived inequities of charging extra for reservations

3) Rewarding loyal customers who value the food / brand / hospitality rather than the highest bidder which tends to bring in out-of-towners, Amex centurion card holders, wannabe influencers -- people that don't help create loyalty

There are many other reasons I'm sure as well. Most chefs/GMs/owners I talked to at the time emphasized that they sincerely are not in this for the money, and yes, they like to make a living, but being able to build a community of food lovers who are passionate about their brand is what they really care about. I ended up pivoting to try to build a shift management app soon thereafter...didn't work out but a good entrepreneurship lesson!

[0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/03/everyone-seems-mad-at-rese...

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I mean yeah, doing it as a third party service without the restaurant's involvement or consent will obviously get you backlash. People aren't pissed with Dorsia, for example, which does it right.

It was almost a decade ago, and the experiment lasted a week, and I earned $20 total...so I assume everyone has let it go at this point ;)

Eye opening to be reminded that "startup" business on the Internet that make the industry news are often really just little hobby projects.

That was my learning too. Went viral for a side project I did on my couch in 5 hours when I was bored.

Lol yeah, it's literally just scalping via an app.

Rather than charging for reservations, there could be a deposit that is applied toward your restaurant bill. The deposit could be refundable up to some cancellation period before the reservation, like 48h or whatever.

Exactly what a high end place I went to in London did. Seemed fair enough. Places are in demand but I’m not being screwed in to paying for the privilege of being able to pay, but at the cost of locked in to committing or lose £50 to cancel on short notice. I’d be fine with this being more normal.

Almost every high level, Michelin type restaurant does this

The pricing is not dynamic though, at any Michelin restaurant I've been to. Even if it were, I'm not sure there would be any change though if the consumer knows that their net cost would remain the same, so it doesn't really matter how much the restaurant charges for the reservation fee.

This is the segment where I least understand the lack of surge pricing. Noma closed because "it wasn't sustainable". Meanwhile people made reservations as soon as they opened up and traveled there from across the globe. I know I'd paid more than they charged and I'm no billionaire.

I guess the people who works there don't just want to make food for the super rich. Maybe they have friends and family, and they want to imagine that the experience they create would also be available to people like that. And if that's the case then the "low" price is a fundamental requirement, and it makes sense to say that it's not sustainable (the combination of the quality and the price).

As I said in another comment, El Buli solved this decades ago by setting a chunk of reservations aside for locals from the town they were located in and another chunk only for people from Spain. Just do that and add a portion for friends and family.

I used to do consulting for a extremely high-end hotel where a single night could easily cost $3k+. Every employee got to spend a night for free every year and they got a number of friends and family discounts that were 90% off.

And the popular ones still sell out immediately because the prepayment doesn't change that they are charging below the equilibrium price.

This is really common now for online reservations where I am in the UK. If you phone up, you won't be asked for a deposit. I assumed it was to combat bots. My favourite restaurant was charging £20 a person, refundable against the bill. It's a £30-40 per person restaurant.

If you want to eat Le Tour d'Argent in Paris, the world's oldest restaurant, you have to pay $500 per person in advance just to make a reservation.

It was never cool. Popular and profitable no doubt today, but literally every consumer there is hates the dynamic pricing model.

Speaking of dynamic pricing, there are a lot of people foaming at the mouth to get this to replace the fixed rate electric utility bill. There are pro/cons to both sides (i.e. efficiency versus safety and simplicity for the end customer). In this case, I don't mean dynamic pricing to mean paying a little more during peak hours, but being directly exposed to the wholesale prices.

It would certainly help get people to consume less during major events and many assume it to be a necessity to make a fully renewable grid work. On the other hand, I struggle with the relentless need to complicate daily life (e.g. being prodded to have an app for everything that doesn't need one).

Where are people foaming at the mouth for this?

Time-of-use rates (peak vs off peak hours) have been around forever. Power users (huh, pun…) like ev owners do it, or new construction sometimes isn’t given an option, but that’s hardly foaming at the mouth.

I heard it tossed around in places like Texas, but most people realize it’s risky AF cause one high-demand day, eg from a polar vortex gone unusually far south, could easily wipe you right out.

Is it like a group of off-grid enthusiasts who can go a day or two off generators or batteries that make all this foam?

I wasn't referring to TOU pricing, but actually exposing residential customers to the wholesale market prices that a commenter below pointed out typically run every 5 minutes in most parts of the US. The utilities and actual generator owners bid into this ultra-complex auction and get an instruction on where to go every 5 minutes that minimizes operating costs and determines prices at every node. These prices are extremely volatile (pretty much the most volatile major commodity) and change rapidly in short periods of time (example: from $25/MWh to $5000/MWh within a few minutes). The bigger players deal with these prices by hedging in various forward markets and through other contracts. There is a big push from academia and a lot of the big names in the industry to have the residential customers exposed to that so the demand side of the auction finally starts working which solves a lot of the pre-existing problems coming from running a market where demand is almost entirely inelastic.

I shouldn't have used "foaming at the mouth" as the connotation is pretty negative. I should have said extremely committed or something like that. These are all smart and good people trying to solve a major problem that's been ongoing for decades. The economist in me agrees with them, but part of me also has an aversion to the constant complexity creep in our lives as well as risk.

I live in Texas. Lots of states in the use have dynamically priced whole sale electric markets, usually the price changes every 5 to 15 minutes.

Residential users ussally don't have direct access to the wholesale market and will contract with a provider for a fixed rate plan or a variable rate plan where the rate only changes every month or so. (Their can be other plan structures like, peak vs off peak rates or 'free nights', etc)

Commercial/Large industrial users will buy on the wholesale market, some manufacturers will get a subsidized rate for having remote controlled breakers installed so the grid operator can shed lead when demand is high.

Texas definitely went too far with this model. It encourages the development of natural gas peaker plants that sit ideal all day and only spin up for a few hours when the price isn he highest. (There's also a whole corrupt saga with the natural gas monopoly in the state from the early 00's when the GOP finally got hegemonic control of the state)

Dynamic pricing destroys the consumer surplus. The reason why people don’t like it is because the consumer surplus is the only reason why capitalism really provides value to most people.

The reason why less-well-off folks are more likely to support a command economy is exactly because they are at the bottom of the demand curve, thus, receive almost no consumer surplus ever… it’s like they have dynamic pricing for almost every item they buy.

It big data is allowed to defeat the consumer surplus, don’t be surprised when the political winds quickly move toward price controls.

> The reason why less-well-off folks are more likely to support a command economy

Yep, but ironically it would destroy even more of their surplus, so, at least for now, they're still benefiting.

But also, why shouldn't surplus be destroyed? You don't see people complaining when business surplus is destroyed, and it is because it benefits one party (ours) over the other (theirs), it's simply hypocrisy to think so. For a truly efficient market, surplus on either side should not exist.

I think the issue is that business surplus concentrates power to a greater degree than consumer surplus. Concentrated power, be it a business, a government, etc is typically bad because it can be used to distort the market in its favor (i.e. corruption). So it makes sense to me why even folks who favor efficient markets don't want to shrink consumer surplus, at least not faster than business surplus.

In the case of a single restaurant like here, I don't see a huge issue though.

That assumes a monopoly or oligopoly, which is not implied here at all. If one doesn't like the practices of a restaurant, they can go elsewhere, freely.

> Yep, but ironically it would destroy even more of their surplus, so, at least for now, they're still benefiting.

No one who is excluded from affording a service due to dynamic pricing going higher than their budget is "benefiting".

I'm having trouble interpreting the boundaries between individuals and groups here in your comment, the language seems to freely and fluidly move between referring to one or the other.

There is long term benefit in that it signals to suppliers that more demand exists and leads to more supply.

> No one who is excluded from affording a service due to dynamic pricing going higher than their budget is "benefiting".

If everyone cannot afford a service, then that means there is limited supply. Any option other than increasing the simply simple favors one party over another for some reason. For example, if price is kept lower than the highest bidder, then it favors whoever was first (which is unfair too). Or you can do a lottery system, which is “fair”, but not necessarily desirable for a society of every limited service is distributed via lottery and hence removing all incentive for competition.

That happens anyway in a market, you do not need to inject a third party in order to get that signal.

What is your angle, why are you so adamant to defend this behavior?

I had a typo in my previous comment. The first “simply” should be supply”.

> than increasing the simply simple favors one party over another for some reason

This comment chain is about dynamic pricing, which does not necessarily involve third parties (assuming you mean scalpers).

> That happens anyway in a market

What happens anyway? Price discovery? Dynamic pricing allows for better price discovery, that is obvious. Whether it is done by sellers or resellers is irrelevant.

Obviously, different businesses have different mechanics, so the cost of that price discovery may not be worth the inconvenience. For example, a restaurant might want to eliminate scalpers so they can require IDs, but still increase their price with every 20% of capacity they sell.

> Dynamic pricing allows for better price discovery, that is obvious

You'll have to clarify your definition of "discovery". Your attempt to keep it vague is suspicious to say the least.

What dynamic pricing actually does is define and enforce pricing according to unilaterally controlled procedural structures. It is basically a capture of the pricing mechanism. Price discovery already happens in the market as the result of people buying and selling things, this is what's already obvious and is understood from Finance 101 by literally everyone.

Traditionally, how price discovery occurs in goods and services (excepting speculation) is 1) market research and 2) adjusting offered prices in cases of massive recognized disparity between supply and demand to maximize the revenue. As an example of 2, if a restaurant wants to start charging for reservations they first set a price, eg $20, and if they book solid they raise the price after a couple weeks or if they can't get any revenue from this they lower the price. That's the extent of "dynamics" that are necessary here.

You don't need to create some additional service that adjusts these things on the fly, first there is no value for the manager who's already watching and synthesizing this activity as part of their understanding of the operations, and also, it costs more for everyone involved compared to the baseline in order to, what, create one job in the economy?

> What dynamic pricing actually does is define and enforce pricing according to unilaterally controlled procedural structures. It is basically a capture of the pricing mechanism.

A seller cannot “enforce” any price, buyers have to choose to buy at a price. That is the price discovery.

Price discovery already happens in the market as the result of people buying and selling things, this is what's already obvious and is understood from Finance 101 by literally everyone.

Correct.

> You don't need to create some additional service that adjusts these things on the fly, first there is no value for the manager who's already watching and synthesizing this activity as part of their understanding of the operations, and also, it costs more for everyone involved compared to the baseline in order to, what, create one job in the economy?

With computers, this is not even a job. Lots of businesses like airlines and hotels already use programs that use data from previous years’ trends as well as searches and accrued reservations statistics to forecast demand and constantly update the price.

As I wrote in my previous comment, a simple program can raise prices as supply decreases, a slightly more advanced one can keep track of the pace of reservations and reduce prices if the pace drops, or if it gets too close to the expiration date for an expiring good.

I'm talking about the failures of command or communist economies, mainly.

why shouldn't surplus be destroyed?

Capitalism is a tool, not a law of nature. Perhaps we quite simply do not want to eliminate all surplus, because we like the result of a system with surplus.

Why would you want such a system? Capitalism is not a law of nature but markets, in aggregate, across many cultures, certainly are, for some definition of nature (perhaps human nature) which is not wholly consistent with the literal laws of nature such as those of the physical world.

Imagine you see a painting you like... you really like it... but you don't even have to look at the price because you already know what it is. It's the most you would possibly pay for it. That's eliminating the consumer surplus. Everything would be priced at the highest possible price that you'd still pay. Need to fly home for a funeral? Suddenly plane tickets are $10,000 because they know you wouldn't miss it for the world.

You need only look at the difference between catering/decor for a wedding and catering/decor for any other event to see how much wealth extraction... how much poorer we would all be, if we lose the consumer surplus.

> Everything would be priced at the highest possible price that you'd still pay.

That is almost always the case anyway. Things are priced at the point that one would pay. To lament that on behalf of the consumer and not of the business is hypocritical, or more concretely, self-interested, as of course we all are.

> how much poorer we would all be, if we lose the consumer surplus.

To summarize my point, imagine how richer we would all be if we didn't have to pay anything at all. Unfortunately, that is a false world; production depends on consumers paying what they can and businesses charging what they must.

> Things are priced at the point that one would pay.

No, things are priced at the point that the market, as a whole, is willing to pay. If you're someone with an above-median income, you're usually paying less than you otherwise would.

Most purchases you make don't start with the merchant checking how much money you have in your savings account.

By "one," I meant the market, of course. It is a generic term, not a specific one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_(pronoun)

>> Everything would be priced at the highest possible price that you'd still pay.

>That is almost always the case anyway. Things are priced at the point that one would pay.

No... not at all. When you need to fly home for a funeral of a close friend, suddenly plane tickets cost $10,000 for you and only you. Your neighbor could get the same flight for $200, but would not be allowed to transfer the ticket to you, because, well, them's the rules in a no-consumer-surplus world.

The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, most people are paying far less than the would pay for things if the companies they bought them from could use dynamic pricing. This is what the consumer surplus is, and is why markets generally worth for both consumer and seller.

> suddenly plane tickets cost $10,000 for you and only you. Your neighbor could get the same flight for $200

No? How can the neighbor get a different deal than one you are looking for in the case of plane tickets? It's not like the airline knows that you are flying for a funeral. Even if they did, as you mention in a non-surplus world, well, yeah, that's how markets work, people have different needs and pay for that privilege. There are business and first class tickets for a reason, as well as prices being more expensive during holidays and summers. Of all of the examples, you chose one of the worst as flight prices are inherently dynamic.

>How can the neighbor get a different deal than one you are looking for in the case of plane tickets?

This is literally how dynamic pricing works, and it happens all the time.

>It's not like the airline knows that you are flying for a funeral.

Yes, they could. A company armed with the biggest of big data could scrape that information fairly trivially. This is my entire point. The more companies know about us, they more they can use dynamic pricing to extract the highest price we'd probably be willing to pay... personally.

>There are business and first class tickets for a reason, as well as prices being more expensive during holidays and summers.

These are different products. Dynamic pricing is different pricing for the exact same product depending on the who the customer is... typically their demographics data.

Sure, but I'm pretty sure no airline does this currently. The fact that they could doesn't mean they do. And even if they did, there is no reason why they shouldn't, if one believes that surplus on either side of the market creates inefficiency.

This is a great comment.

Taking this further, if big data can eradicate the consumer surplus, then maybe big data could make price controls more feasible. Maybe big data actually could make a command economy kinda work.

There is a book called The People's Republic of Walmart about how "command economies" work in corporations, and why we couldn't have something similar in the general economy. I remain unconvinced, however, because the difference is that the amount of data you need is vast and often uncapturable, uncollectable. You basically have to know everything about everything, so markets are a better bottom up emergent simulation of supply and demand, hence why they work so well, at least in the aggregate.

I think the GP was referring to "cancelling people" when he said "before it was cool".

But I do agree with your point ;)

El Buli had some of this figured out decades ago. They set reservations aside for locals from their little town and another portion for people from Spain. However, you had to write an application(!) instead of using an auction for the remainder.

At least for ultra-fine dining like El Buli, Noma or Central 1) should be irrelevant. I've had this argument with restaurateurs before and it seems that they are a lot more concerned about some magical "fair" prices than much of the customer base. I've looked several times into traveling to Copenhagen to eat at Noma. At that point, who gives a shit if the meal is $300 or $1,000?! It all pales compared to the travel cost. If people aren't willing to pay it, the auction won't go that high. Easy peasy!

And then I keep hearing that fine dining isn't sustainable. Just charge more!

You "looking" into travelling doesn't pay Noma's bills. Fad places where "the high price is the attraction" like the Salt Bozo aren't sustainable because the fad passes.

Me flying to Spain and going to Arzak which has been around for many decades certainly paid their bills. It's telling that most people on tables around us were speaking English as well.

People hated your business because you brought ticket scalping to the restaurant world. Many years ago, I went on a couple dates with a 'professional' ticket scalper; as soon as I found out what she did (which she tried to hide with several all-too-transparent euphemisms), I noped right out of there. These people are the worst of capitalism.

I don't think most people mind when a restaurant sells the moral equivalent of tickets to dining slots ahead of time. I've visited restaurants that do that, and had no problem with it.

The issue is that you were taking something that was free (open reservation slots), and then forcing people to pay for them if they wanted to dine there... when they could have just made a reservation -- perhaps farther in advance -- for free.

I agree that most people in the restaurant business aren't in it for the money (if they are, they've picked the wrong industry). But scalping reservations to their restaurants is making things worse, not better.

The scalper issue would go away if tickets were auctioned off instead in order to find the actual equilibrium price. I know that this is a solution that some of these only platforms considered. Nothing ever happened. However, now they are marketplaces and the ticket gets sold twice which means the platform gets commission twice. So no scalpers made money on the delta between sticker price and equilibrium and the platform for commission twice. All that is money that the artist and venue aren't seeing. Just do auctions!

Edit: The reservations also weren't free. For several restaurants I've had to figure out at what time new reservation open up, set an alarm and then still sometimes not get a seat because it's already booked out. When I traveled to Spain we had one place we called late at night our time to get a reservation. None of that is free. I'd happily paid extra to avoid this trouble and beer certain that I can go to the restaurants for which I'm traveling to another continent.

> The issue is that you were taking something that was free (open reservation slots), and then forcing people to pay for them if they wanted to dine there... when they could have just made a reservation -- perhaps farther in advance -- for free.

So first come first serve is an okay way of allocating resources, but charging a higher price is not?

I would imagine the immediate problem is just that both approaches are fine, but the approach that is not fine is a third party arbing the interchange, i.e. you want either the seller or the buyer to get the surplus, not a rando in between.

In this case I would say yes. It's not a universal thing.

Are you just intentionally missing the point here?

Correct.

Why?

It is economically inefficient. Scalpers create no value and destroy some by spending their time.

Scalpers transfer goods from those with lower willingness to pay to those with higher willingness to pay. This is by definition increasing economic efficiency. Rationing of scarce resources and all that.

Transferring goods from those "with lower willingness to pay to those with higher willingness to pay" does not increase economic efficiency, it changes the allocative efficiency. But at scale, in many situations, scalping merely becomes rent seeking. Rent seeking reduces allocative efficiency. How much the rent-seeking of scalpers offsets the allocative efficiency is up for debate.

But all of this is sideways to when and whether scalping is moral or, at least, preferable in society. Not all actions which increase allocative efficiency are things we actually want in society.

Otherwise, kidnapping and ransoming children back to their parents would be a boon industry.

The first paragraph is only true if you believe the supply is fixed (ie the elasticity on the extensive margin is zero). This is often a good way to teach economics because much of the math remains the same in a production environment but when you apply it in an environment it isn’t designed for it leads to fallacies like this one. Free markets and capitalism work precisely because it isn’t a zero sum game like this.

And your last two paragraphs are nonsensical, you are comparing the right to eat at a top end restaurant with the right to not have your kids kidnapped it’s downright laughable that you’d see such a moral equivalence.

It’s hard to take a reply serious from a person who doesn’t understand analogies.

I understand analogies just fine, your analogy is just ridiculous because you analogize kidnapping and ticket scalping.

Yes, but the restaurant has set prices they think are appropriate for their food. They want to be open to any customer willing to pay $x per person to eat, more or less. Scalpers make it so that people who can only barely pay $x per person are supplanted by people willing to pay much more. These people have higher ability to pay, but that doesn't mean they will receive as much utility as the people who are being priced out.

The restaurant cares about increasing people's utility, not about only serving a the wealthiest fraction of people who can afford their food (those with the highest ability to pay).

The restaurant is free to require names upon making the reservation and checking IDs.

The rationing already occurs in the reservation process, without money changing hands.

> This is by definition increasing economic efficiency

Bespoke markets are by definition economically inefficient. There's a reason most people buy mass-manufactured cars, and it's not just the cost, it's that bespoke car production cannot make enough cars to meet demand.

At absolute best a bespoke market may sell a few more of a limited set of dining opportunities to others through the additional marketing medium. At better what bespoke markets do is maximize profit taking. At bad this maximization of profit taking channels money to the middleman that otherwise would have gone to the merchant (as there will be people who pay for a reservation and then order the cheapest meal at the restaurant, as they can't afford more). And at worst this makes it inconvenient for people to frequent the restaurant, resulting in an overall reduction of customers. The bad and worst circumstances can result in fewer operating restaurants. And artificial resource scarcity is the opposite of economically efficient.

If scalpers (who have overheads of their own) are making money then that implies the restaurant is doing the economic equivalent of leaving a lot of $100 bills on the floor. Before those bills were being picked up by random customers but now they are being picked up by people who heard there were restaurants leaving $100 bills on the floor. But the cause is ultimately the restaurant choosing to just give up free money by not charging a price so that supply and demand equal and the market clears.

You're assuming my "bad" and "worst" scenarios do not exist. And also assuming that knock-on effects don't occur which cause issues in other parts of the economy. A cartoon-like example: spend X+Y money to dine at restaurant, spend -Y less money elsewhere, people working elsewhere are laid off and can no longer afford to spend money at restaurant. Restaurant loses customers. Restaurant closes.

If that happened then the scalpers would go out of business first as demand at the face value would be falling closer to the supply.

Mutually assured destruction does happen. The problem is if there are more potential scalpers who are convinced they know why the previous scalper failed than there are restaurants that can absorb the hit.

The market already does that.

Fair to say "exploiting the commons for personal gain"?

> (which she tried to hide with several all-too-transparent euphemisms

"market maker" ?

Call it what it is -- rent-seeking (or maybe in HN parlance, "MitM attack"). Every single economist from Smith to Marx hates these people.

Arbitraging prices in different markets is not rent seeking.

Forcibly divesting consumer from producer, creating two separate markets where before there was only one, is rent-seeking. They artificially created the conditions that justify their existence, and if they were to stop existing or otherwise stop their practice, the situation would revert. None of this behavior is defensible following any economic ideology except a trivially cruel one.

There is no force, the seller can require name at time of purchase and check identification.

Which requires more effort on their side. The seller have to spend d money to defend its business from rent seeker.

The amount of effort of typing in a name and checking an ID which everyone has on them is inconsequential relative to the benefit.

You will have to convince the people who actually run these platforms that that is true if you want it to be a feature of reality. It seems only you are here speaking in hypothesis while everyone else is speaking about facts of the matter.

What are the different markets? These people just buy up the supply early and resell to the same market.

The markets are at different times and places. Sometimes it is physical (such as on the sidewalk outside the venue). Or it could be a different website.

Curious to hear what these euphemisms were

Bringing efficiency to a sub-utilized market, perhaps.

> These people are the worst of capitalism.

That's pretty strong. I won't name all the people doing much worse, but lots of people do jobs that are only about profit, such as much of the finance industry, tech industry, etc. If she was a developer for Google's ad system, would you do the same?

Actually what I like best is a refundable fee for no-show: there’s a restaurant I rarely visit by myself but often when I want to have a nice time with people from abroad; it’s a restaurant on the 16th level with an amazing view over Berlin.

Essentially, they’ll bill you 50€ per person and you’ll get it back (aka the authorization is cancelled) when you show up, but the transaction is executed when you don’t.

A few years back there were many empty tables during prime time because of the reservations, and now there’s barely any table unused.

It seems to work and I’m absolutely happy to reassure the restaurant with money that I’ll be there.

Maybe you next startup idea will be more successful: an app for tracking the location of well stocked give-a-penny/take-a-penny trays to raid, or collecting and reselling all the samples from grocery displays.

Maybe make a FakeryBakery pay kids a commission to collect grocery story Kids Club Cookies and resell them.as half-price boxes.

This comes off as excessively negative. They had a hypothesis, found out it isn't how they thought both from consumer and restaurent perspectives, moved away.

Far worse ideas sprout everyday and many get positive attention as well. Judge the process along with the idea.

With the context in this thread I would implement it as dynamic cancellation fees. You pay to reserve, but 100% reedeemable on bills. If you cancel, you lose a clearly notified percentage based on how popular the time slot is. Might work while still staying true to the idea of fairness.

I'm not sure if the article you linked was misleading, but it really just made it sound like you were scalping reservations. No wonder everyone hated on it.

If you facilitated the restaurants adjusting prices for prime bookings, then maybe it would have come across differently.

Also nearly 10 years later, the world is a much worse place. I wouldn't be surprised if blatant booking scalping didn't really raise any eyebrows.

> 2) Desire to maintain accessibility on price point (same reasons artists don't charge more for tickets)

since when were there not different prices for tickets based on seating? if a concert is only one or two nights, then the nose bleed seats could be the same as eating at the restaurant on a Tuesday night, while the front row seats would be eating on Friday nights.

The pricing tiers you are describing are not created by the artists. This is the venue or the ticket distributor doing this.

Artist for sure are colluding to sell tickets at higher prices into the secondary market.

Ticketmaster as well is offering “Platinum” tickets which are just more expensive tickets with no better views or perks.

> Rewarding loyal customers

Restaurant reservations are fundamentally different compared to, say, Taylor Swift concert tickets. Loyalty to an artist is multi-channel (concert tickets, merchandise, CD, streaming) and thus difficult to track and reward. Restaurant reservations occur at a single point of sale. It is much simpler, conceptually, to first offer up Friday 7pm reservations to people who have dined with you in the past, at a lower price, then open them up for a higher price to the general public if they haven't sold within a reasonable time frame.

These reasons seem to only apply if the surcharge applied to every reservation?

Could only charging for peak times cause these downsides?

There is another way. It involves no money and nothing for the restaurant to do. First come first serve. Basically you want in. Show up and stand in line.

Many places in Paris do that now with virtual waiting line (show up, get a number and an ETA, get bipped when it's about to be your turn...). Nice when in a walkable nice neighborhood.

Happens a lot in upstate ny too, been to a few places like this. For what it's worth.

One downside is that means you basically can't go to that restaurant pre-theater or pre- some other fixed time event. Though you're eating earlier if you're doing that anyway.

That might work for a more casual kind of restaurant, where you would just go somewhere else if you can't afford to wait in line. It doesn't work for the more upscale restaurants, some of which are reservation only.

Depends. For me, being in home is much better option than standing in a queue with unknown waiting time just to get the previlige of eating in a restaurant. Most people go to resturant not as neccessity but a optional visit to spend good time. And this solution takes away good time.

I agree for places like doctors visit though. Everyone should stand in queue rather than a limited reservation.

>I agree for places like doctors visit though. Everyone should stand in queue rather than a limited reservation.

What if my work schedule isn't flexible? Having a queue and no option for an appointment time means that I'll essentially never be able to guarantee a doctor's visit. I'll just have to schedule time off and pray that the line isn't too long.

Sure, that's how it works, and reservation is the solution to it, not the other way around.

They are talking about putting something like ticketmaster in the middle of this. That is scalper city. Oh then a band aid to make it work right. Then another then another. Most restaurants run on a thin margin. All of those band aids will cost money. Something the 'ticketmaster' system is not going to eat.

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