[jrockway]

I'm not sure that makes sense. You now have to pay someone to maintain a reservations book and be available at any time to receive the phone call. Meanwhile, the reservation companies can just have ChatGPT make the phone call for you; do you think that restaurant employees can administer a Turing test or that ordinary customers could pass a Turing test?

Meanwhile, anyone that cares about this can still delegate it to a human. Call the Amex concierge, "can you get me into FooBar at around 7PM any night next week" and they take care of it. The phone adds no fairness; it opens up a way for middlemen to offer a service that you pay for but that the restaurant never sees.

While maybe a rare situation, software to handle reservations is a great idea. You instantly save one employee's worth of work for a tiny amount of money.

The other option is to only take walk-ins, but then you risk having empty tables when people are tired of waiting in line. I am sure many places have tried walk-in only, only to be disappointed about not making enough money. Restaurants like reservations.