Complaining about Portland, restaurant reservations, and so on.

[Cary Grant]



So without taking reservations what is your vacancy rate?

During peak times when people are most likely to want reservations, we are typically full, We began limiting reservations to six or more only. And we always require phone confirmation.

Technically, taking credit card info and placing a hold costs money. There's an additional processing fee for "card not present" plus the transaction fee etc. It's not major but that plus manually entering a CC is time consuming. Then there's the matter of refunds, associating a deposit with a future payment etc etc... Additionally, now with PCI compliance - we can't simply hold on to a customer's CC info.
We -could- use a third party system like Open Table but we're small and the fees add up ($2.50 per seated diner + overhead). And then there's integration with the POS - there's not a good solution right now in our case.

 

[cyc wid it]

It's a trade off for sure. All things being equal, I'm picking the place that makes my life more convenient / better overall experience. There are so many great places to eat.

 

[kixslf]

Yeah lack of diversity sucks.

Never ever have I heard of people around here complaining about the lack of places with reservations. Just get there when they open. Seems pretty straight forward.

 

[cyc wid it]

You can't plan around that (other people already waiting in line) or that eats into the rest of my scheduled activities. I can plan around being guaranteed a table at a time of my choosing or pick a place that won't get in the way of other commitments.

 

[kixslf]

meh, it's never been a problem for me but I understand why it would be annoying, for sure. To be honest, we just avoid going to places like that during the busy days of the week. (Thursday - Saturday)

That being said, the places I want to go to, that have reservations available... I CANT GET A ******* RESERVATION at because they're too booked out... for months it seems.

oh well

 

[LA Guy]

You can't plan around that (other people already waiting in line) or that eats into the rest of my scheduled activities. I can plan around being guaranteed a table at a time of my choosing or pick a place that won't get in the way of other commitments.

Aren't there a ton of tech start ups that pay some schmuck a few bucks to do menial tasks, like waiting in line, for you?

 

[cyc wid it]

Yep, like TaskRabbit. It's another thing to worry about and some extra cost. Last resort if it's someplace you just have to check out.

 

[NaTionS]

Would appreciate some Portland recs for a trip in late May.

food
coffee
local beer / breweries
museums
shopping
other cool stuff

 

[basil rathbone]

^ ditto, also late May. Maybe we will see each other at the same recommendations. I assume you know the secret sf handshake?

 

[ChetB]

There's a Portland thread (not this one) with tons of recs for all those things:

http://www.styleforum.net/t/252076/the-ultimate-portland-or-shopping-thread