Tickets for sale
DINING IS NO LONGER WHAT YOU DO BEFORE THE CONCERT; IT IS THE CONCERT ITSELF
The screen is blank except for one bold number: US$244.38. This is the price for two dinner tickets at Trois Mec, one of Los Angeles’ most popular restaurants. As I input my credit card number to confirm the order, the promise of the meal begins to feel more like attending a concert than making a low-stakes dinner reservation. And just like a concert, pre-paid, non-refundable meal tickets mean I’m the one who’s going to be losing money if I don’t show up.
I get up from the dining table, pacing around the living room in my flannel pyjamas, trying to rationalize the concept in my head. I’m used to confronting “The Bill” only once the meal is over, after a pattern of food and wine has been applied in blurry rhythmic motion like a salve to soothe the frustrations of another day. Only then is the expense wheeled around as the waiter’s voice gets very low.
“When you’re ready,” he whispers. And you are ready, relaxed and willing as ever to fork over whatever it takes to let you leave and nurse your food coma in peaceful solitude. I imagine the same faceless waiter appearing now, hiding his disdain as he eyes those pyjamas and leans over the empty string cheese wrapper by my laptop.
“When you’re ready,” he says. Only this time, the romance is gone.
I return to my laptop to buy the tickets anyway. Upon re- examining the lump sum ticket price, there is something strangely comforting about the pay now, do later model. Just like Uber or Airbnb, you know exactly how much the service is going to cost before you commit to it. Any concern that the bill might be more than you hoped is eliminated and replaced with total transparency.
Yet as I make the final clicks to confirm my purchase, I’m redirected to the website’s general ticket page. In the time it took me to make up my mind, the dinner sold out.
After joining the ticket waitlist I receive a matter- of- fact email from Tock, Trois Mec’s ticketing system. It reads: “You have been added to the waitlist for this experience.”
“We look at the dining experience at Trois Mec as a full “experience,”” confirms Trois Mec executive chef Ludo Lefebvre. “By selling tickets in advance we know exactly who is coming in, what they are eating and any other preferences. This gives us the ability to provide the best experience, with the best possible ingredients at the best price point.”
Trois Mec is not the only restaurant that has found ticket sales to be more effective than traditional reservations. Dozens of restaurants across America, Asia, Great Britain and Europe like OKRA in Hong Kong, Bubbledogs in London and Ernst in Berlin are following suit. The pay-inadvance model is a refreshing reversal for many in the industry, where the problem of reservation no- shows can cause restaurants to hemorrhage money on empty tables.
Although no- shows affect everyone in the business, the issue is amplified in fine dining where last minute customers are unlikely to stumble in on a whim looking to pay $250 a head for a 13-course tasting menu. The result is that many of the restaurants inspired to transition to ticketing systems are fine dining or upscale lo- cales. These eateries are at once eager to present their meals as full- service experiences while simultaneously preventing the lost profits that result from empty tables.
Yet what seems like a cureall ticketing formula doesn’t always lead to success. While Trois Mec in Los Angeles has seamlessly implemented the system, others like Coi in San Francisco have found themselves moving back to traditional reservations after an attempt at ticket sales flopped. Like with any ticketed event, the key to success lies in convincing customers that the experience in question is worth buying a nonrefundable ticket to.
The restaurants that find the most success with presold tickets tend to be eateries with the most famous chefs. As these masters of gastronomy have been labeled the new rock stars, paying a visit to their kitchens is no longer what you do before the concert; it is the concert itself.
As our collective hunger for celebrity chefs and hotticket restaurants increases, will the future of dining consist of resellers standing outside restaurants hawking tickets into the exclusive tasting menu waiting inside?
In some ways, this future is already happening. In Los Angeles, tickets for dinner at Trois Mec can often be found on Craigslist at a marked up rate. The same is true for Grant Achatz’s Next in Chicago, where enterprising foodies have re- sold tickets for thousands of dollars a piece. Yet as restaurants continue to transition to online ticketing systems, there is something to be said about picking up the phone and asking for a reservation yourself.
This is what I did when I could not find any tickets to Trois Mec through Tock. Though, as it turns out, they had a spot for me.
EATERIES WITH TICKET SERVICE SELL MEALS AS AN EXPERIENCE