ISO restaurant real-talk

It’s not just time limits on tables.

One of the first times I ventured inside a restaurant after the initial 2020 shutdown was at Corvino, a full-service restaurant in Kansas City. It was July 2021, the blissful start of hot vax summer. We’d recently road-tripped halfway across the country with two toddlers, and the restaurant had installed a hospital-grade air purifier¹. About 75 minutes into our meal, the host quietly passed by and dropped a card on our table. We had 30 minutes remaining in our reservation, a condition I’d agreed to when I booked the table. It was the first time I’d experienced such direct communication about this expectation, and… I didn’t hate it.

During those early pandemic days, diners seemed sympathetic to a restaurant’s plight. We viewed reservations as a contract with the business, understanding its need to plan ahead, especially during the time of social distancing.

“If you were going to make the effort to go, you wanted to make sure you secured a reservation,” OpenTable CEO Debby Soo told me recently, remembering her earliest days leading the company in 2020. “[The restaurant]  might not even take you if you didn't have a reservation.” 

Those initial Covid years ushered in a real restaurant vibe shift. Guests were willing to slightly inconvenience themselves in order to enjoy good food and hospitality inside a restaurant. Diners cared about supporting these businesses when times got tough.

Those vibes have since evolved. Eventually, diners got miffed when restaurant popularity dictated they book ahead (“But I have no idea what I want to eat next Friday night!”) or, perhaps more recently, when they were required to consent to a time limit on their table, a practice that a restaurant’s tech systems have long supported.

The sentiment pops up every once in a while, most recently from New York Magazine’s Grubstreet a few weeks ago: 

“Restaurant technology is such that streamlining and tracing the clockwork is possible via Resy and the point-of-sale system Toast, but the job of making sure groups actually leave still comes down to staff members.”

Those staff members, Grubstreet writer Megan Krigbaum wrote, often don’t want to talk about it — probably for fear of angering guests. One of her sources called the practice of tastefully showing diners the door “a nuanced dance.” But, Krigbaum concedes, restaurants are “being more blunt about it,” especially online.

I classify this behavior as ‘restaurant real talk.’

Restaurants use channels Instagram or a website to push out information about their operations — time limits, deposit policies, behavioral contracts, info about rising prices, surcharges, fees, or just notes on what makes their restaurant worth patronizing. 

For example, my San Francisco favorite Flour + Water publishes an entire page on company culture on its website. Fellow Mission District restaurant Good Good Culture Club’s site prominently lists its values and maintains a fairly exhaustive list of frequently asked questions, including one that quells what I image to be sheer guest panic about reservation times booked close to the restaurant’s closing time: “Our last seating is at 9 pm, we do not close at 9 pm. We assure that all guests have their orders in and are well nourished prior to our kitchen starting to break down. We always give fair warning.”

According to data from a recent SevenRooms report, 43 percent of millennials are influenced by social posts from restaurants they follow that specifically highlight their personality. (The report didn’t share corresponding percentages from other generations, but did note that this is the top influence for millennial diners.)

A restaurant providing hospitality by talking to its guests isn’t a new or particularly innovative strategy, but it is a useful one², and I want to believe that diners in 2024 are at least a little bit receptive to this honesty.

Are they? You tell me!

I’m on the hunt for more examples of this ‘real talk’ from restaurants. Do you have one to share? 

Comment below or hit ‘reply’ on this email. I think there’s a larger story here, and I’m hungry for proof.

1. If I remember correctly! I wrote about this for Food & Wine but the article seems to have vanished.

2. Here’s a fun fact: I launched the first edition of the newsletter that would become Expedite over 11 years ago because I noticed chefs and restaurants talking to their diners on Twitter.