More restaurants are requiring a credit card to hold a reservation

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Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, a New York City restaurant with three Michelin stars, has an 18-seat counter and six tables. The 13-course tasting menu costs $430 per person, before beverage, tax and tip. A $200 nonrefundable deposit per person, to be credited to your bill, is required. You lose the deposit if you cancel less than a week in advance, though you have three months to rebook a meal. After that, no-showing costs you $200. The policy is more aggressive than most, but cancellation penalties are not uncommon, especially at that level of restaurant. At Le Bernardin in Manhattan, where I dined recently, the fee is $150 per person for canceling less than 48 hours prior.

In the Capital Region, cancellation charges regardless of party size are rare and comparatively minimal. Mouzon House in Saratoga Springs charges $20 per person for canceling within 48 hours before the reservation. (The online-reservation platform notes that late cancellation “may trigger” the fee, but a reader who complained to me about it said he was flatly told it always applies.) Farmhouse Tap + Tavern in Altamont requires a credit card to make reservations on Friday and Saturday but allows canceling up to 30 minutes beforehand; a $20 fee per person applies for less than half an hour.

Deposits or credit cards are required more widely for larger parties. Toro Cantina in Colonie, for instance, takes a card number for tables of six or more, charging $25 per person for canceling less than 48 hours in advance. The Saratoga Springs restaurant 15 Church, a highly desired destination year-round but especially during the summer, takes a $100 deposit on parties of eight or larger when the horses are running. To try to ensure people show up, 15 Church staff makes three attempts to confirm between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the day of the reservation, canceling if there’s no response. Yono’s in Albany requires a deposit of $25 per person for groups of eight or larger, but they may cancel right up until reservation time with no penalty.

Why, the reader asked me, are such fees necessary?

Because no-shows or late cancellations cost restaurants a lot of money. A table for four that sits empty because a reservation was not honored could represent the loss of hundreds of dollars of revenue, which a $20-per-person fee only partially offsets. TouchBistro, a Toronto company that makes restaurant point-of-sale systems, says no-shows or last-minute cancellations average 20% nationwide. I heard similar estimates from some local restaurateurs, though most said it was lower.

Since that figure makes for easy math, let’s use it for a hypothetical. If restaurant grosses $2,000 a night, 20% of reservations are no-shows and the tables are not filled by walk-ins, that’s a loss of $400. If the business is open daily, 20% no-shows could turn into a loss of almost $150,000 a year. In an industry where profit margins are said to be only 3% to 5%, that’s a powerful incentive to charge a fee for not honoring a reservation.

“But,” protested the reader when I explained all of this, “what if you get sick?”

Restaurateurs are reasonable people. (Well, most of them.) If you explain the situation and ask to rebook for a meal after you’ve recovered, I’m sure they wouldn’t charge you. And, frankly, I suspect cancellations fees are mostly used as a threatening deterrent, not hard-line policy.

As one owner put it to me in an email, “We just want people to be here when they say they will. No-shows can really mess up a busy night. If people are waiting for a table and they see tables sitting empty because (reservations) decided not to come, they get mad at us — and we lose money.”