They’ve got no reservations about doing whatever it takes to land reservations.
Dining out in New York City, especially at a high-profile eatery, has become a cutthroat endeavor as the demand for tables aggressively outweighs the supply.
Now an elite network of resellers stands to make tens of thousands of dollars a year, while reselling sites also take a bite of the Big Apple — with some earning in the millions.
At Ralph Lauren’s posh Polo Bar, tables have been gulped up by an Ivy League, undergrad math wiz named Alex Eisler. The sophomore at Brown University has made it a business to create phony numbers and emails to snag reservations — and resell them for a healthy profit.
“Sometimes they recognize my voice, so I have to do different accents,” Eisler, who said he made $70,000 on bookings last year, told The New Yorker. “I have to act like a girl sometimes. I’m, like, ‘Hiiii, is it possible to book a reservation?’ I have a few Resy accounts that have female names.”
Under the screen name GloriousSeed75, he also enjoyed a hefty $850 tip just for booking a lunch at SoHo hotspot Maison Close.
Reservation resale purveyor Appointment Trader is among the sites raking in big bucks from scalping, reportedly making a whopping $6 million on secondhand booking last year — more than double than 2022.
Its black-market numbers speak for themselves: A table reservation Thursday night at the West Village’s bougie Italian spot Carbone — check not included — was available for $340, while the coveted Polo Bar cost nearly twice that at $650.
Even Hollywood elites like Justin and Hailey Bieber, who were shunned by Carbone two years ago for showing up without a reservation, are reportedly using the backdoor system.
Last February, when Hailey wanted to hit 4 Charles Prime Rib in the West Village for dinner, she reportedly turned to a man named Nicky DiMaggio, a waste management business owner who flips table reservations on the side and usually charges a fee of $500 to $1,000.
“My client list is, like, the N.B.A., Megan Fox,” he told the New Yorker. He didn’t disclose how much the Biebers allegedly paid for his services.
DiMaggio made more than a thousand reservation sales last year, he claimed — which means his staggering profits could soar into the high six figures.
The business has an open market as many plebians are willing to pay up to $1,000 for a chance to feel like a big shot for an evening. Recently, Matt Rubin, 27, spent $250 on Appointment Trader to enter the pearly gates of the newly opened “It” restaurant Roscioli. He first tried booking on Resy to no avail.
Some even enjoy raking in thousands by booking as a minimal-effort side hustle.
“It’s, like, some people play Candy Crush on their phone. I play ‘Dinner Reservations,’ ” a seller who raked in a cool $8,000 online last year — all while passively watching TV — told the New Yorker.
“It’s just a way to pass the time.”
However, restaurants are going knives out over the increasingly emerging problem.
Last year, a reservation scalper plagued Yoshino, a Michelin-starred sushi joint on Bowery, by scooping up time slots — making $180 per seat — through a group on a Chinese version of X, née Twitter.
“If you have scalpers out there that are snagging up reservations, [that] makes it more difficult for the everyday person to get [in],” Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, previously told The Post.
“It makes restaurants, especially hot restaurants, even less accessible.”
Even elite locations like Le Bernardin are getting burned.
“It’s bad for business,” celebrity chef Eric Ripert told The New Yorker, adding how his team will hawk for odd email addresses or disconnected phones.
“Every day, we spend hours trying to track down the bots and the fake reservations. Last week, we caught eight fake reservations … If you have tables that are no-shows, the profit of the night is done. So, we cannot lose reservations!”
The West Village’s popular Bangkok Supper Club, recently listed as one of the toughest reservations to nab in the city, has been subject to bots designed to check for sudden openings up to 100 times per minute.
It, too, is feeling the pinch of the long-running resale ploy.
“We’re constantly bleeding money,” restaurant rep Jenn Saesue told the New Yorker. “I basically have a small army … these people are relying on us.”
