Popularity Comes With Fragility
Across the country in Los Angeles, Andy Schwartz, the co-owner of Baby Bistro, which opened in May earlier this year, is still riding the restaurant’s initial wave of intense popularity. Reservations open only two weeks out for the restaurant’s 36 seats, which turn two and a half times per night.
“It’s sort of an unverified belief that it decreases cancellations. I think if you make a booking a month in advance, something is more likely to come up. But within two weeks, you probably have some idea of what you’re doing,” Schwartz said.
To secure one of the 75 or 76 reservations available per service, diners are instructed to be ready at 4 p.m. the day before they hope to dine, waiting for spots that open up through cancellations. In that sense, Schwartz is dependent on cancellations to function. On weekdays, Baby Bistro’s Resy notify list sits between 30 and 75 people deep, and on weekends it can stretch between 100 and 300. Even so, the rate of ebb and flow between bookings and cancellations is significant.
Most people are canceling before noon the day prior, when confirmation messages are sent to diners. “It’s always an equal number of cancellations by the time service starts as reservations,” Schwartz said.
For now, if a three-top cancels, another party usually takes that spot. But Schwartz is already thinking about what happens once the newness of Baby Bistro and the fervor to get a seat fade. At the moment, it is still filling up, a situation he refers to as a “luxury.”
“But what irks me is that someone can hold a spot for two weeks, then cancel at 11:55 a.m. the day before. Then we have a harder time filling those tables on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” he said.
Intentional, Spontaneous, or Just Noncommittal?
In data recently released by OpenTable, the company claims that people are dining out “more intentionally,” with reservations between 4 and 5 p.m. up 13% year over year and group dining up 11%. But does dining out more intentionally on the part of the diner translate to fickleness and exasperation on the part of the restaurateur?
OpenTable also observes that “a new desire for spontaneity is shaping 2026 dining behavior, with diners grabbing last-minute reservations and showing up on a whim.” The company reports an 84% increase in “Notify Me” alerts year over year, as well as 39 minutes as the average amount of time Americans are willing to wait for walk-ins.
As a society, we are simultaneously intentional and spontaneous. Are diners simply not following through with their intentions, or are they changing their minds at the last minute more than ever?
In defense of spontaneity, and speaking of walk-ins, some restaurants are still trying to figure out how to make them work, either without access to walk-in traffic due to location, or by being fully dependent on it and not taking reservations at all.
Wilde’s in Los Angeles serves roughly 90 covers per night and is primarily a walk-in restaurant, though it takes reservations for parties of six and over. Catering to walk-ins is something owner and general manager Tatiana Ettensberger is deeply committed to, both because it is a rarity in Los Angeles and because the neighborhood location allows for it.
“You want to see more walk-in restaurants in LA, because people have become so accustomed to reservations. We want to bring people back into the concept where you walk in, put your name down, then head across the street to one of the wonderful bars in the area,” she said. “It’s an experience that feels really natural to us and to our experiences in other cities. We’re still figuring out if that works here.”
Being walk-in focused does not mean rushing patrons through dinner, and it also allows Ettensberger’s team more flexibility in their small space.
“Someone may wrap up earlier [in a traditionally allocated length of time] and then you have this weird 45 minutes for a table sitting open. It also gives us less of an urge to push a table out to get another in,” she said.
Ettensberger believes a night out should still be centered around a meal. “But we can give you a little prequel to that experience, by suggesting drinks before or after,” she said.
It is tempting to view this behavior as a reaction to reservation fatigue or commitment phobia, especially after reservation systems and strict time blocks became commonplace during the pandemic.
But the approach does not prevent Wilde’s from dealing with drop-offs from its waitlist. Ettensberger reports a drop-off rate of about 30 percent, with guests putting their name down in person and then declining to dine once a table becomes available.
Chase Valencia, the co-owner of Lasita in Los Angeles, wrestles with the gap between intention and spontaneity. Lasita opened in 2021, has 65 seats, and is particularly popular with large parties. Reservations are strongly encouraged, as it is a destination neighborhood restaurant with no street visibility.
Valencia struggles with how to ask people to make reservations while also encouraging walk-ins. “We’re not baller, we’re more like a bistro,” he said, noting that he wants Lasita to feel approachable.
But approachability often comes with a casualness around keeping a reservation. Valencia reports frequent no call, no shows, with “people making bookings the day of then not showing up, as if they’ve made multiple reservations.” When he tries to follow up through the Resy app, he is often “ghosted” by diners or told they went with a different restaurant.
These no-shows happen most often with later tables, booked for 9:15 or 9:30 p.m., which are particularly difficult to fill. Valencia attributes the behavior to diners who do not understand restaurant etiquette.
“A few years ago, they’d apologize and accept the $25 cancellation fee, but now reservations are fickle or they’re not so much of a promise [that someone will show up]. There’s also more abrasiveness [in demanding that fees are refunded],” Valencia said.
And yet, on the other end of the spectrum, people are still falling over one another to secure coveted reservations.
As a food writer, I am frequently contacted by friends and acquaintances hoping I can help them secure a difficult reservation, like one at Tokyo’s Den. Two friends report calling the restaurant hundreds of times.
“On call number 688, 70 minutes in, they answered. And I got three seats for the night I arrived in Tokyo,” said one, with deep relief.
“Den called me at 1:30 a.m. and woke me up to offer me a reservation,” said another, who reported calling hundreds of times and sending multiple emails.
These are the very pinnacles of booking with intention, as OpenTable’s data suggests. While less extreme, friends in Philadelphia have found other loopholes to get into restaurants, including purchasing dinners at charity auctions to dine at Mawn, which has a notoriously long waitlist, or even, in one case, impersonating my husband after discovering they shared the same first and last name.
This is all very intentional. We are in the age of restaurant reservation scalping. So why, when diners are going to such lengths to secure reservations, are they also missing them?
