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I went with my family at 5 pm on a Sunday night only to be told that they couldn’t seat us for the rest of the evening due to reservations. The restaurant had several empty tables. My parents own a restaurant and I’ve worked at several others and it is frankly bad business to leave tables empty and turn away business to accommodate reservations later in the evening. It would be one thing to be told there was a long wait for a table when the restaurant was actually full, but this was ridiculous. They could have easily turned the table over before the reservation arrived. I also saw them turn away at least ten other patrons. I stormed out of the restaurant, and my husband overheard the hostess say that she would have found us a table to sit at if I hadn’t walked out the door. Um, they should seriously retrain their hostesses to attempt to find tables for customers before turning them away.
I guess if you want to eat there, make a reservation? I won’t be back.
But the thing is, you would have complained when they tried to push you out before you were ready, so they could open that table up for a reservation. And when you took too long, then they have a customer with a reservation that's also unhappy. One unhappy customer is better than two.
Actually I just made that up on the spot, but I'm sure the reasoning is something like that. But yeah, at a restaurant that takes reservations, you should probably make a reservation. I don't think it's fair to publicly shame a small business because you failed to make a reservation.
If they had a very large party coming then having some empty table would be par for the course - some will be empty while awaiting other groups to finish in order to create a large enough seating area.
Have you spoken with a manager/owner? Because proclaiming not to go based on second-hand restaurant management experience seems a bit over the top.
This is a good example of why making reservations or phoning ahead can save you time and help the evening play out in the way you would like.
You don't know what time the reservations were for, so there is no way of knowing if you could have been seated and served prior to the reserved tables arriving. Next time, make a reservation. Simple.
There are other reviews of people waiting for tables for over three hours while tables sat empty. It just sounds like bad policy to me. Restaurants shouldn’t book all of their tables through reservations. Even if you walked into Bida Manda on a Saturday night they would tell you there was a four hour wait, not tell you that you couldn’t eat there.
There are other reviews of people waiting for tables for over three hours while tables sat empty. It just sounds like bad policy to me. Restaurants shouldn’t book all of their tables through reservations. Even if you walked into Bida Manda on a Saturday night they would tell you there was a four hour wait, not tell you that you couldn’t eat there.
Cape Fear has been open for what, two weeks? I'm sure they're booked all night.
Even if tables are empty, you have no idea if staff called out, or what.
You should really request this post be removed - it's not fair to the owner.
We've been turned away from high end restaurants before because they had no reservations left, even when I could see several empty tables at the time. My guess is that is how they plan their food supply. And at least once it was because an event of some sort (probably a company) had booked most of the place. They might literally be unable to serve you whatever you order on the menu if they've planned for a certain number of meals + very little extra. I don't know anything about this particular restaurant but seems likely that the availability of locally sourced seafood might be such a limiting factor as well. Would make sense to manage that via table reservation.
If they tend to operate on a reservation-only or -primarily basis, then fine. No big deal to me. We'd then make reservations if we really wanted to check the place out.
Easy solution - make a reservation with staff on the spot if you really want to eat there and come back then
They don't even do same-day reservations - I just tried to check what was open tonight on their website
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