The restaurant industry and fine dining have long suffered from a nasty phenomenon, the entrepreneur opens in LinkedIn.
The Finnish Fine Dining restaurant tested a booking fee, which is a more common way in the world. Illustration. Adobe Stock / AOP
The restaurant Demo in Ruoholahti, Helsinki, has a table reservation fee of EUR 100. The reason is customers who do not appear, even if they have booked a table.
– If I am asked, the transition to booking fees has been quite successful, and I still wonder why so few restaurants have introduced it in Finland, the owner of the Demo restaurant Tommi Tuominen refreshes In its LinkedIn publication.
-The restaurant industry, and especially fine dining, has long been suffering from a nasty no-show phenomenon in Finland. People book tables at the restaurant but do not appear, he continues.
According to Tuominen, the phenomenon causes problems for restaurants.
– The first thing that comes to mind is the most obvious: designing staff shifts is difficult, sales will go away and not everyone who wants to get in, he writes in the publication.
-I have always been bothered by a thing that no one usually thinks: a no-show leads directly to food loss. At Fine Dining restaurants, food is always pre -prepared for the evening, and if guests do not arrive for any reason, a large part of this prepared food cannot be utilized later, and this will result in loss.
At the Demo Restaurant Demo, efforts have been made to prevent the $ 100 booking fee per dinner guest. Payment will be credited to a guest in the final invoice.
– The same system is very common in the world, and I personally think of it as a partial fee than anything else. Now, after half a year of user experience, I can tell about the results that the booking fee has led to, Tuominen writes.
According to him, there has been only one no-show tables after the booking fee for six months.
– Always the right number of staff at work. The food loss has dropped significantly and the food margin has risen. The middle purchases risen. No negative feedback on the payment, he lists the benefits of the booking fee he has experienced in the publication.