Maybe There Should Be a Way to Rate Restaurant Customers, Too

When it comes to the business of reviewing restaurant experiences, it’s a one-way street and customers have the right of way. There are multiple platforms where they can spout their opinions about everything from the food, to the service to the traffic they had to endure on their way to dinner. Some customers write reviews as seriously as Shakespeare wrote sonnets, entirely forgetting that opinions are subjective. 

They’re also unverified, meaning they can say whatever they want and no one will know if it’s fact or fiction. Did it really take 20 minutes for the server to bring drinks or did it just feel that way? Maybe it’s time restaurants got to review customers. 

Clearly there will never be a version of Yelp where restaurant staff can log on and complain about how their customer didn’t smile enough or they asked for water and then never drank any of it. If this website did come into fruition, servers around the world would rejoice, but it’s just not feasible. But there are some existing apps out there that could possibly venture into the world of reviewing customers, or at least rating them. Restaurant reservation apps like Resy and Open Table are ripe for this opportunity. Hear me out.

Customers very often will make multiple reservations for restaurants and then, as the reservation gets closer, decide where they want to go and cancel all but one. Restaurants are used to canceled reservations which is why they so often overbook. If they don’t overbook and 20% of the reservations don’t come in, the night is spent trying to catch up. Chefs and restaurateurs are playing a dangerous game overbooking while trying to predict how many reservations will actually show up. This is part of the reason cancellation fees are so prevalent these days when booking a table. 

Here’s where rating the customer comes in. The restaurant should be able to rate that customer or notate that they canceled at the last minute. That could help other restaurants in the future when looking at their fully booked evening and seeing how many customers on the books have a history of not following through. Customers may balk at the idea of being rated, but Uber drivers do it all the time. We all strive for five stars on Uber, but I myself only have a 4.72. Did I slam the door too hard once? Did I say thank you too many times? Who’s to say except for one particular Uber driver? My score isn’t enough to deter other drivers from picking me up, but it does make me aware of the possibility. Rating customers who cancel reservations at the last minute might make them think about how their actions affect others.

Let’s not stop there though. There are other ways customers could be rated. If someone is verbally abusive to the staff, shouldn’t the restaurant be able to rate them accordingly so other restaurants know what they’re in for? Or if they showed up late for their reservation, dock them a point. Take another point away if they complained about everything and yet another point if they have poor manners. If that were to happen, they’d see their rating drop and maybe, just maybe, they’d change their ways. Restaurants could even decide to only accept reservations from people with a four-star rating or better, just like customers do when choosing where to eat. Imagine how nice that would be for the staff to look at their reservations and see it’s filled with 5-star diners. 

Of course this will never happen. Customers will continue rating restaurants with no accountability and restaurants will still deal with last minute cancellations and not knowing what kind of customer they’ll be serving. It will always be a one-way street for customers only. Restaurants can only hope for the occasional yield to oncoming traffic.