The hot topic of the day among NYC foodophiles (can’t stand the term “foodie”): reservation scalping. Check out Table Exchange. The site let’s you buy an existing reservation (specified time, place, and number of guests) at a hot restaurant. Upon completing the transaction, you are given the name under which the reservation was made — you show up and pretend to be that person. Some snips from the email chain:

“This is evil, although inevitable now that reservations can be made online.”

“You know that there are going to be people doing the OpenTable/TableExchange variant of the SEM arbitrage game.”

“I suppose that the restaurants could scan this site and make it a policy to cancel reservations that are being re-sold, if they so desired…but they would require an ID to check in!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under General.