It’s an all too familiar scene. The weekend is fast approaching and you’ve finally convinced your friends to agree on a time to meet only to be left questioning how every bar in the city seems to have been booked out weeks in advance.
We spoke to hospitality staff across the city to get their take on why it’s so difficult to get a reservation right now:
Football
Unless you’ve been completely off-grid for the past week – you’ll probably have guessed that the Euros 2020 are a major reason why you might be struggling to find a seat.
The tartan army have taken over the town in search of the community spirit that makes the game, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.
Kevin Crompton, General manager at the Church on the Hill in Shawlands, said: “It’s definitely lead by the football – the Euros is a massive event and because of that as well as the restrictions we’ve got we probably won’t want to deal with walk-ins. When our booking system went live the 18th and the 14th are the two events that blew up straight away so it’s certainly led by the football on Friday.”
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Image by soumen82hazra from Pixabay
We’re all tired of staying at home
Graham Roberts operations manager for Lebowski’s, Porter and Rye, and the Finnieston believes it’s the novelty of being allowed out again that’s keeping our city’s bars packed out.
He said: “Since we opened our weekends have been massive. I think everyone is just really happy to sit in a bar and have a drink.
"So many people are sick of drinking in the house that they just want to go to a bar and have a proper pint pulled.”
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
You’ve got to get more organised
Gone are the days of an impromptu pint on the way home from work on a Friday. Jennifer Quaill, Manager of Max’s bar and Grill on Queen Street says it’s all about planning if you want to secure a table over the weekend.
“It’s the customer’s responsibility to realise that they have to plan in advance if they really want to get a booking. Even before Covid you couldn’t wait until the last minute to get a table. Saturday is primetime – everybody wants to go out. If you’re upset that you’ve not got booking you’ve just got to realise that other people were more prepared and got it sorted sooner.”
The rise of panic booking
After that advice, you might be tempted to try and secure a reservation far in advance just for the sake of having a backup plan, but think twice about the consequences of this.
The operations manager at the Metropolitan Bar and Restaurant Jennifer Morrison said: “We’re experiencing a lot of no-shows. I think people are booking up spaces at multiple different venues and then on the night just deciding where they want to go to the detriment of all the venues relying on the income and customers who are genuinely looking to book in.”
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