> From: Alex Tabarrok [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2002 4:25 PM
> Many fine restaurants, however, have > long waiting times > to get a reservation. The French Laundry, for example, is > perhaps the best > restaurant in America and the wait to get in is 2 months or > more! (2 months for > a normal day - much longer if you want to book for Valentines > or something like > that.) This sort of waiting seems much more amenable to a Becker type > explanation involving non-linearities and prestige factors. > My wife just informed me that The French Laundry's reservation policy stipulates that reservations can only be made for the calendar date *EXACTLY* two months ahead of the date you call to make the reservation. No more or less. For example, today they are taking reservations for March 15, 2002, and no other date. Getting a reservation thus requires spending a good portion of a day (or several days) dialing and redialing the reservation line in an attempt to get through, while everybody else is attempting to get through too. (I just called to verify that this was indeed their reservation policy, and the line was busy.) What's the armchair explanation for that? My first suspicion is that it is more important to them to be able to restrict public access to the resturant in order to provide the desired atmosphere for the patrons that do get in. The reservation system is probably circumvented by some pre-approved group of patrons. But that's just a cynical guess. Michael Giesbrecht Internet Engineering Lucasfilm Ltd.
