Buy a seat at the table
INNOVATIVE RESTAURANTS SUCH AS PAGU TURN TO PREPAID RESERVATIONS
You wouldn't host a dinner party without knowing the head count. So why do we expect chefs to run a restaurant without knowing exactly how many mouths they'll feed?
No-shows are the bane of the restaurant business. Some diners don't think twice about bailing on a reservation, but when expected guests leave their seats empty, restaurants — which already operate on thin profit margins — lose anticipated income and waste money on food and staffing. So around the country and here in Boston, some innovative eateries are turning to advance ticket sales, asking guests to pre-purchase a seat at the dining table just as they would buy a seat to a sports game, movie or concert.
If that makes you balk, bite down hard: It may just be the future of dining.
Ask chef Tracy Chang. When she debuted her new Japaneseand Spanish-inspired restaurant Pagu in Cambridge just before the new year, it became the second restaurant in the Boston area to employ Tock, an online reservation platform founded in 2014 by Nick Kokonas, owner of Chicago's award-winning Alinea, widely regarded as one of the world's best restaurants, and the similarly lauded spots Next and The Aviary. Tock's signature service is the sale of prepaid reservations, or “tickets,” based on dining experiences that can be customized by individual restaurants.
To dine at Pagu, for instance, guests prepay $60 for a fourcourse prix fixe menu that includes inventive eats such as braised pork belly bao and roasted kabocha (Japanese squash) ice cream. Those who'd rather order a la carte secure a seat with a $25 deposit that is later applied to the final bill.
If guests can't fulfill their reservation, they can always transfer their ticket to someone else.
“Tock allows for us to better prepare and better manage expectations in multiple ways, including in the kitchen,” Chang said. “As chefs, we're able to better manage costs and, consequently, time, and therefore improve upon the
ingredients and techniques on the plate.” The ticketing format is especially helpful to a new restaurant still finding its groove — and its customers. Having firm numbers helps the restaurant manage everything from staff schedules to perishable inventory. And Pagu, located steps from the MIT campus, seems like an appropriate ambassador for the approach.
“Pagu is located in the innovation hub of Cambridge, which has been described as one of the leading tech cities worldwide,” Chang said. “In this ecosystem, students, professors, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and others challenge what has been done and seek to improve upon the existing.” Pagu, she said, is taking part in that culture.
It's not alone. Overall, Tock works in some capacity with 123 restaurants in 42 cities, said Kokonas, and in December alone processed just under $12 million in prepaid reservations. The method allows restaurants to “improve sales, reduce food waste, shorten wait times for guests and increase efficiency, and therefore overall profits,” Kokonas said. He said his own restaurant group has tripled its net margins over the last three years, even amid rising rents, labor, health care and food costs.
Locally, star chef Ming Tsai of Wellesley's Blue Ginger and South Boston's Blue Dragon is an investor in Tock, which raised $7.5 million in investments in an October round.
The first area restaurant to use the service was Somerville's Journeyman, home to daily-changing nine-course tasting menus of adventurous and esoteric farm-to-table cuisine. Guests who prepay via Tock receive $15 off the standard $115 tasting cost, and they can also splurge on special experiences: from a $75 ticket for a special dinner of fermented foods to a $160 omakase experience with cocktail pairings from Journeyman's sibling-neighbor, Backbar.
Looking beyond any specific platform like Tock, ticketed dining is generally “gaining traction,” said Journeyman chef Tse Wei Lim. “We do believe it's going to become more and more common to see this arrangement. In our opinion, it makes a lot of sense, because dining out is increasingly treated as a form of entertainment. It's a plan for your evening, made in advance.”
“Top Chef” star Tiffani Faison will sell advance tickets for Fool's Errand, her 12-seat restaurant and cocktail bar opening later this winter in the Fenway neighborhood. The approach seems to be proving especially popular with similarly intimate venues, where guaranteed sales can allow chefs the freedom and financial flexibility to concentrate on creating bespoke experiences for guests.
Chef Peter Ungar invested in building a proprietary online platform to sell tickets for the haute cuisine at his 20-seat Somerville restaurant Tasting Counter, which opened in 2015 and serves exclusively multicourse tasting menus for lunch and dinner. Every experience, which peaks at $195 for a weekend dinner, is prepaid and inclusive of food, beverage pairings, service and tax. Guests can leave their wallets at home. They're happy to do so. “Generally speaking, guests absolutely love it,” Ungar said. After all, it's not just the chef-owner's experience that benefits. “The ticketing system allows our guests to focus on their dining experience at Tasting Counter and avoid buzz-kill moments that may occur once guests receive their bill at the conclusion of their meal.”
For now, such systems are probably still best suited for high-end, niche establishments like his. But in a world where innovators such as Uber are already shaking up the payment process for cab rides, it'd be foolish to assume that restaurant tickets are some fleeting fad.
“There is no doubt this is the future of dining reservations and by no means a trend,” Ungar said. “In this age of technology, the current system of calling for reservations and paying your bill at the end are completely archaic.”
If you're still waiting to score a reservation at Pagu, check out chef Tracy Chang's recipe for romesco, which she serves with an assortment of roasted vegetables, such as baby potatoes, carrots, scallions, leeks and asparagus, that have been roasted in olive oil and sea salt at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
PAGU’S ROMESCO
300 g. roasted tomato,
peeled 10 g. roasted hazelnuts 30 g. roasted marcona
almonds 10 g. garlic, confit 2 large roasted red bell peppers, seeded, peeled t. smoked paprika t. sweet paprika 30 g. arbequina olive oil 1 t. sherry vinegar
t. fine sea salt 1 t. shiro miso
t. cracked black pepper 1 t. organic cane sugar
Combine tomatoes, hazelnuts, marcona almonds, garlic and peppers in a blender. Blend until slightly chunky/smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients. Taste. If you prefer a chunkier sauce, reserve some nuts to blend in briefly at the end. Yields 1 pint romesco.
‘DINING OUT IS INCREASINGLY TREATED AS A FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT. IT’S A PLAN FOR YOUR EVENING, MADE IN ADVANCE.’ — TSE WEI LIM, Journeyman chef