nkokonas

Likely not credible.

Correct. They have a pattern of this behavior IMO. See my Medium post on this subject, linked in the Eater article.

For a while people tried to do that. By law the tickets have to be transferable. However, scalping is illegal in IL unless they are licensed. As well, we do our best to limit the number of tables sold to any one CC, URL or email address. Impossible to fully police, but we try.

We also put in URL blockers, bot protection, and a captcha to avoid people locking up tables quickly.

one direction on pricing means it's a 'deals' site and will only attract struggling restaurants.

well aware of that fact... but the scalability and margins are such that it's still a great business. If I charge flat $ 495 per month for a restaurant but save them $ 100k plus per year then I win all restaurants... incremental costs minimal on the dev side. Hosting is a pass through.

Our booze does not run 80% margins... more like 70% .... and labor crushes it beyond that. Restaurants are lucky to get 10% margins if you are smart. We do better, but we do tickets!

inclusive pricing is what I'd like to do but people compare pricing without gratuity for most places... TFL can do that. Next cannot.

Service charge is literally the charge for restaurant service -- instead of a 'tip'. It's not a charge for the tickets.

We do that because of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) makes tipping difficult if you charge ahead... or if you want to share revenue with cooks.

well in fairness I had a bit of experience in software design -- ancient but relevant. We are redoing the entirety of the site now... keeping the good, improving the rest.

Sure... but the thing is this: you could just take small deposit against the final check. And vary the scale or application of that deposit. For example, putting in a $10 deposit could give you a $ 15 credit. That's just one example on how a 'normal' demand restaurant could use ticketing and dynamic, variable pricing.

I think it would work for almost any restaurant -- or for that matter any business or service that has time slots... think dentist, hair cutter, spa, etc. If a restaurant is less in demand then they can use pricing as an incentive, never charging a premium but going under baseline for quiet times.

Aviary is the example that I use because we never go all night to full capacity. We've done 350+ covers, but we could do more. Most Wednesdays we do 125-150. So take a non destination place, add in a deposit for prime slots or other perks, and I believe the psychology is that you can move patrons to those times.

I think the entire industry was afraid to take the risk that patrons would hate tickets -- you spend $ 2 million building a restaurant and you want to minimize risk. I felt Next had so many people interested in the concept that I could afford to take that risk... indeed in some ways it was concepted FOR the tickets because I was so nutty about them for a year or two before.

And yes, I was very very worried. Up for several days in a row beforehand. Didn't shower or shave... ate pizza, drank cheap wine. Usual stuff.

the lean start up was the software itself, not the restaurants. The restaurants were hardly lean... but the software was one programmer and me.

-- nick