New site lets you trade in restaurant reservations
Netherlands residents can now trade in reservations for popular restaurants where it’s often difficult to find a table. The Dutch version of the website AppointmentTrader launched on Tuesday. For about 100 euros, you can avoid a four-month wait at the Michelin-star restaurant De Kas, BNR reports.
AppointmentTrader offers a platform where buyers and sellers can find each other without the restaurant's involvement. Reservations are sold by auction. The site predicts a price point based on previous transactions and how busy the restaurant is. The site is already a success in New York, where tens of thousands of reservations were traded in the last year, founder Jonas Frey told the broadcaster. AppointmentTrader gets 30 percent of the sale. Restaurants who team up with the site have to advertise it somewhere and, in return, get half of the brokerage fee the site charges.
The first tables in the Netherlands have already been sold. Restaurant De Kas had the premier. Reservations for the Michelin-star restaurant in Amsterdam that specializes in local vegetables sold for an average of 90 euros. Tables at Mr. Porter, a steakhouse on the top floor of the W hotel in Amsterdam, sold for slightly more.
The two Amsterdam restaurants were surprised by the news that reservations were being sold online. The office manager of De Kas told BNR that their business does not want to be associated with this in any way. “We are quite shocked by this,” they said. “We do not agree with this happening and will be contacting the company behind the site.”
ApointmentTrader owner Frey is not surprised by the resistance. According to him, he received a cease and desist summons from just about every major chain in New York. “We take them seriously, but they usually lead to nothing,” Frey told BNR. “There is simply no law or regulation around restaurant reservations.”
The largest trader on AppointmentTrader, with the screenname MaternalRecord, told the broadcaster they make reservations online and then sell them. “I keep a large spreadsheet with times when the new data is opened and then quickly book tables,” they said. “I also booked some tables at De Kas.”
Formidable, the market leader in reservation software in the Netherlands, is also less than enthusiastic about AppointmentTrader’s arrival. “We don’t think this is the direction the industry should take. Eating out should be democratic,” spokesperson Rosemarijn Disseldorp told BNR. “In this way, it becomes an elite thing.”
According to Disseldorp, people often save up to eat at a top restaurant. “If you add another 100 euros for a reservation, it will only become more expensive.”
Frey has heard such arguments before. “In the Soviet Union, everyone could get a car. YOu only had to queue for a year,” he told the broadcaster. He thinks selling by auction puts sought-after spots within reach for a large group of people. Everyone can spare a hundred euros, according to him.