Eating and Drinking with Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl: Ticketed Reservations
February 25, 2015
Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine's Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl brings her extensive knowledge of the Midwest dining scene to Eating and Drinking.
Travail Kitchen in Robbinsdale, Minn., is going to surge pricing. What is surge pricing? Most of us are familiar with surge pricing from Uber or from health care — it costs more to get a lift during rush hour than a slower time, or to go to urgent care rather than to a typical doctor appointment.
Following this model, Travail Kitchen has begun taking ticketed reservations, and surge pricing will determine what tickets will cost. Dara explains on her blog:
Here's the deal. From this point forward, 75 percent of all Travail seats will be filled by selling advance tickets. The remaining 25 percent will be held for walk-ins (The Rookery will remain entirely walk-in). They will typically release three months at a time, except for the first batch of tickets, which will be released next Wednesday, and will cover all available evenings in April. Then, sometime in March, the tickets will be released for May, and June. To find out the exact release time you will need to get on their newsletter, or watch their new website, and Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Tickets will have the same surge- or variable-pricing that restaurants such as [Chicago's] Alinea use, so tickets will be cheaper on low-demand days (Wednesdays) and at low-demand times (very early and very late) and will be more expensive on high demand days and times (prime time Friday and Saturday).
Restaurants in other cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, have already begun using this model. Will this be a growing trend in Minnesota restaurants? If the Travail experiment works out, other restaurants will follow suit, particularly for big eating-out days, such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.
Ticketed reservations can be particularly helpful for people who live at a distance from the restaurant they plan to visit and want to be assured they can get a seat.
Listen to the complete interview to hear more about ticketed reservations and surge pricing in restaurants.
Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl, veteran Twin Cities food and dining authority, is a five-time James Beard Award-Winning food writer who is also at Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine and author of Drink This: Wine Made Simple.