If you’re longing to try Carbone’s spicy rigatoni vodka or Polo Bar’s bacon cheeseburger, it could take months—and a little luck—to get a reservation. But a website called Appointment Trader might be able to get you a table tonight, if you’re willing to shell out several hundred dollars.
The site, which launched in 2021, lets people with existing reservations sell them on a virtual marketplace. And it gives diners the chance to get a table at a very exclusive restaurant, like Rao’s, where reservations have become more difficult than Taylor Swift tickets.
While the platform trades reservations in hundreds of cities, said Jonas Frey, the site’s founder, it’s starting to reach a significant customer base in New York City, where the site receives half of its traffic. In the process, it has become a growing concern for some traditional booking platforms.
The idea for the site was born out of the frustration of trying to make an in-demand reservation, said Mr Frey, who lives in Miami. He started the platform as a way for people to buy hard-to-get appointments from auto departments, but soon expanded it to include restaurants, hotel rooms, bars, and clubs.
Mr Frey, 35, created an algorithm that uses mobile phone data he bought from vendors to identify the most popular restaurants and when they’re full to determine the price of each first bid. More than $2.4 million worth of reservations have been sold to date, according to the site.
Appointment Merchant takes a discount of about 20 to 30 percent from the sales price of the reservation, depending on the type of reservation.
Of course, the original reservation costs nothing, except in cases where the guest must pay a deposit. “There’s a lot of demand for something that’s free,” Mr. Frey said.
Appointment Trader allows users to even bid on reservations that do not yet exist. Those reservation slots can be made by restaurant managers, who often have the power to find space for powerful customers. Managers can then pocket the bid, Mr. Frey said.
Las Vegas-based AJ Bernstein, who works at a technology company, has used the site for five reservations, including Sexy Fish in Miami, Delilah in Las Vegas, and Beauty & Essex and Mizumi in New York City. He said he was willing to spend hundreds of dollars to secure a reservation because “it’s really a drop in the ocean compared to the total amount” spent at the dinner.
“These are restaurants that have exclusivity, and that makes it more appealing,” he said. “I pay more premium because I want to be at this particular restaurant.”
Mr Bernstein, 48, said he sees these restaurants as must-see attractions, such as the Statue of Liberty. The most he paid was $200 to eat at Sexy Fish, where he said he spent $3,000 for four people. Since then, he’s gone to the restaurant’s South Florida and London locations three more times.
In Manhattan, Nick DiMaggio, 33, has used Appointment Trader to book more than 220 reservations at restaurants such as Carbone, Nobu Malibu, and the Polo Bar for himself and customers of his concierge business, called Little Nicky.
“Everyone wants to get in somewhere they can’t and brag about it,” he said. He added: “The wealthy will pay anything for access.”
This may sound like scalping, which is illegal in many states. New York’s scalping law is particularly strict, but several lawyers said the language only applies to tickets, mostly in the sports and entertainment industries.
Last month, Yoshino, a New York sushi restaurant, claimed that someone was scalping its Tock reservations. And small groups like #FreeRezy and the Reddit subgroup r/FoodNYC have also posted reservations up for grabs.
Apps similar to Appointment Trader, such as Dorsia, promise to give their paying members access to exclusive reservations at restaurants they partner with. In 2014, a similar, short-lived service called ReservationHop drew a public outcry. Appointment Trader has received similar online criticism, but traditional booking platforms have also been cited as contributing to this problem.
Resy specifies in fine print that users cannot sell or trade their reservations.
“Restaurants tell us that third parties who trade or monetize reservations by reselling them undermine the success of their business, and that Resy reservations obtained on third party sites and accounts often result in significant no-shows and late cancellations” , says a spokeswoman for Resy. said.
Nick Kokonas, Tock’s former chief executive and owner of Alinea Restaurant in Chicago, threatened to sue Appointment Trader when it first hit the scene, but Tock’s current chief executive, Matthew Tucker, said the company was not pursuing a lawsuit. taunts and none Don’t see Appointment Trader as competition.
Customers who can afford to pay extra for a reservation are in “a very privileged position,” Mr Tucker said. “Tock is much more democratic. Come on, you have the same chance as everyone else and hopefully you get it this month. It is not for the privileged who can go on Appointment Trader and pay much more.
Several popular New York restaurants with reservations listed on Appointment Trader declined to comment on the site.
However, some diners who have used the Appointment Trader website and reviewed it online have complained that it doesn’t work. The New York Times attempted to buy a confirmed reservation for New York restaurant I Sodi for $40, but a reporter never received a response from the site. Multiple attempts to contact Appointment Trader customer service through the platform and email have failed.
Mr. Frey acknowledged that his company didn’t have enough customer support staff and said the process could be simpler for users. He said the platform adds some features that would improve customer response.
In December, Rob Kearney, 54, planned a trip to New York City from Maine and bid on a reservation at Rao’s for $200. After bidding, Mr. Kearney typed in his credit card information; the site requested that he agree to the terms and conditions before confirming the sale. Mr. Kearney changed his mind after reading those terms, but his card was still charged in full. The site later reversed the charges.
