Reservation for eight...

[terry]

A group of people reserved a table for eight.

They showed up with 13 adults.

If you were the owner of a place that had 28 seats, would you be:

A.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
B.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
C.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
D.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
E.) None of the above. Instead, get pissed off because they didn't call to add more people to their reservation.

True story. Saturday night, someone made a reservation for eight people during peak hours. The waitress asked the owner if they should even accept the reservation. The owner said OK, but needed to make sure that it was only eight people. Also, asked that if there was an increase in their party size, that they call back to increase the party size.

The group came in on time. There were ten people. The owner got lit up.

It was so funny to watch.

I thought the owner was going to kick them out.

About ten minutes later another two people walk in to join their group.

...





About ten minutes later another person joined the group.

I was on the floor.

[Mike GadgetGeek Stock]

A group of people reserved a table for eight.

They showed up with 13 adults.

If you were the owner of a place that had 28 seats, would you be:

A.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
B.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
C.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
D.) Ecstatic! I would welcome the added business!
E.) None of the above. Instead, get pissed off because they didn't call to add more people to their reservation.

True story. Saturday night, someone made a reservation for eight people during peak hours. The waitress asked the owner if they should even accept the reservation. The owner said OK, but needed to make sure that it was only eight people. Also, asked that if there was an increase in their party size, that they call back to increase the party size.

The group came in on time. There were ten people. The owner got lit up.

It was so funny to watch.

I thought the owner was going to kick them out.

About ten minutes later another two people walk in to join their group.

...





About ten minutes later another person joined the group.

I was on the floor.

The owner NEEDS to have a good front-of-the-house person IMHO...
.

[Northside Food]

I'm sympathetic to the organizer of the dinner, because this happens all the time to me at DragonCon. I'll ask MONTHS in advance "Who wants to go to Trader Vics on Thursday?" and get a headcount for the venue.  I'll double check it periodically before con and make sure I've got accurate numbers. And then we get there and five extra people have glommed onto our party and the restaurant is scrambling to find chairs. They are always very gracious and accommodating with us though. And then everyone takes off without paying.  It's gotten so bad that I'm going to make everyone pre-pay for this year's. Because its just a nightmare.

[MoT]

No-shows can rob servers of their share for the night too.

As far as adding peeps to a table, I guess it's pretty much okay, but I have a feeling the patrons complain about the size of the table by the time all is over if they are squeezed in.... all wanting to sit together.

Kiddo does a lot of corporate stuff and the planner usually thinks they know more than the restaurant as far as accomodations go...and usually resto is correct.

 

[terry]

It's great to see multiple points of view regarding this subject. I have seen this happen multiple times. But, every time it happens I just cringe.

Heck, Some of these people are regulars.

What made me laugh about this party of 13 was the fact that the person who organized the group works at a restaurant as a server. I think it was done on purpose to see if it would provoke some kind of reaction from the owner.

I think this person is on this board.

[KoPP]

IMO, it's up to the manager that's on - if they want to accomidate that kind of an increase, it's up to them. If they want to say sorry Charlie, that's their right as well. I would hate to hear that someone did it just to jerk management around - that's pretty mean spirited.