Restaurant Owners Are Fed Up With Reservation-Hoarding Bots
To score a table at Don Angie, the Italian-American hotspot in New York's West Village, the official course of action is to log on to the restaurant booking site Resy at 9 a.m. seven days before the desired dining date. At least, that's the policy that chef-owners Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli have set up for potential diners.
But those who have recently tried to book those elusive seats via the reservation platform know they rarely open up.
If you head over to Appointment Trader, however, and are willing to pay up to $125 just for the opportunity to walk through the door, you can start bidding on seats for any day for the next few weeks.
The issue of seats disappearing that should be available began last summer, says Rito. “But it has become more pronounced over the last few months.”
She believes that bots—software programs engineered to perfect certain tasks, like swiping up Taylor Swift tickets or restaurant reservations the millisecond seats open up—are mostly to blame.
The operators behind those seat-snatching programs then try to make a quick buck—or several hundred—by reselling the reservations on sites like Appointment Trader. The two-year-old website enables individuals to buy and sell restaurant bookings and finds seats using bots as well as concierges and other people with access to restaurants.
Owners at several other of New York's hard-to-get-into restaurants, from downtown Indian haunts Dhamaka and Semma to tiny Farra Wine Bar in Tribeca, and the revamped new American spot Virginia's, also report being burned by bots. “We have noticed certain names making a large amount of reservations, and either no-showing or having different guests utilizing them,” says Isabella Pisacane, a partner and director of
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