JouJou, a new upscale restaurant in San Francisco, has been open less than two months and already has the makings of a destination. It’s from the team behind two-Michelin-starred Lazy Bear; it’s on trend, part of a wave of French restaurants hitting the city; and trying to score a peak-dinner reservation is tough. The restaurant is often booked, which makes people want to go even more.
Bail on that reservation, however, and JouJou has a policy that will rattle guests and make future diners nervous: The restaurant charges a $75 per person fee if you cancel less than 24 hours before your booked time. No-shows and late cancellations have a direct impact on a restaurant’s bottom line, and while these types of penalties are not uncommon in the Bay Area, the dollar amounts are on the rise.
Even two years ago, a fee of $15 or $20 for a late cancellation or no-show at a nice restaurant didn’t raise eyebrows. But now, those amounts are doubling and even tripling to $35 to $75 to better reflect restaurants’ losses at a time when everything costs more. Some Bay Area restaurants have even started charging for cancellations made less than 48 hours in advance. SFGATE spoke to restaurateurs behind seven concepts in Oakland and SF to understand the nuances of their policies and how they handle circumstances around cancellations.
JouJou co-owner Colleen Booth told SFGATE that they chose to implement a fee because they have seen cases of the issue continue to rise at their other business. True Laurel, she said, has an “astronomically high” no-show rate of 13%. A 2021 OpenTable study found that 28% of Americans said they hadn’t shown up for a reservation in the past year. Of course, this was mid-pandemic, so figures might be a bit lower now…