NY bill bans selling hot restaurant reservations for up to $650 on the ‘black market’
NY Post
They’re taking “black market” reservations off the menu.
Reselling hard-to-get bookings at elite Big Apple restaurants would be banned under a new bill that aims to crack down on internet hustlers who block New Yorkers from their favorite eateries by scalping dinner reservations like concert tickets.
The legislation would fine the middlemen — some of whom make as much as $70,000 a year — for booking hard-to-get mealtimes on websites such as Resy and OpenTable and then reselling them without the restaurant’s permission, said Assemblyman Alex Bores (D-Manhattan).
The prices range from $340 for a scalped spot at the fashionable Italian red sauce joint Carbone to $650 at the trendy Polo Bar.
And that’s before even paying the price for the meal.
“It is absolutely absurd,” Bores, who sponsored the state bill, said of the practice. “[It] stops the family that wants to go out for a special meal to celebrate a graduation, or the couple that wants to celebrate an anniversary.”
