{"id":198080,"date":"2026-04-15T14:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198080\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:21:08","slug":"diners-forced-to-battle-bots-apps-and-influencers-at-nyc-eateries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198080\/","title":{"rendered":"Diners forced to battle bots, apps and influencers at NYC eateries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Securing a table at a top NYC restaurant has long required some planning<\/a> and a great deal of patience.<\/p>\n

Lately, however, going out to dinner in the Big Apple has become a full-on competitive sport \u2014\u00a0call it the Hunger Games \u2014\u00a0complete with a list of unwritten rules and strategies for winning. <\/p>\n

Eager diners in the five boroughs and beyond have become accustomed to setting alarms for midnight reservation drops, they spend unhealthy amounts of time on Resy and OpenTable, hitting the refresh button, battling not just a bevy of bots unleashed online by shady third-party table brokers, but all-too-real influencers as well, not to mention the social-scrolling hordes who follow them from spot to spot.<\/p>\n

You thought queuing for Taylor Swift seats on Ticketmaster was hard? Try getting into The Polo Bar<\/a> on a weekend \u2014\u00a0or any night.<\/p>\n

For avid Upper East Side eater Brittany Fried, 34, being told nothing\u2019s available over and over again has become all too familiar \u2014\u00a0even after following the rule of logging in the moment a favorite restaurant like Torrisi releases new slots for the next month.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt literally takes the fun out of being someone who genuinely enjoys food,\u201d the 34-year-old told The Post. \u201cI\u2019d be lucky to even post up at the bar at this point.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brittany Fried considers herself a foodie who loves to try new restaurants, but this new era of dining out has made that hobby incredibly difficult.<\/p>\n

According to Fried, the spontaneity of an impromptu night out \u2014 one of NYC\u2019s great social pleasures, is sadly nonexistent these days<\/p>\n

Amanda Lavino, 32, has had the same frustrating experience, just with a longer list of casualties, including Soho\u2019s Or\u2019esh, 4 Charles Prime Rib, Afro-Caribbean joint Tatiana, and popular Indian eateries like Bungalow and Ambassador\u2019s Clubhouse \u2014\u00a0the latter so mobbed with fans that the restaurant has now explicitly limited guests<\/a> to one reservation per month.<\/p>\n

Lavino recently became so desperate to score a table at The Corner Store, the celeb-loved hotspot known for its $21 sour cream & onion martinis and glorified Tostito rolls, that she set notification alerts on her phone every night for a month straight.<\/p>\n

She never got in.<\/p>\n

\u201cDifficult is an understatement,\u201d Lavino grumpily told The Post. \u201cQuite frankly, these restaurants are near impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanda Lavino has exhausted all her options trying to get a table at the celeb hotspot, The Corner Store.<\/p>\n

Lavino said the sustenance-depriving shift has felt especially noticeable over the last two to three years, as New Yorkers are left scrambling for seats to order a $38 dirty martini, bougie cosmic brownies at spots like Tatiana by Kwame Onwauchi (\u201cIt\u2019s just a f\u2014\u2013g brownie, the chef told Bon Appetit last year) and Roman orgy-worthy cuts of meat at Cuerno that, depending on who you ask, may or may not justify the digital warfare required. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a place becomes the cool restaurant all over TikTok, it goes from hard to get into to basically out of reach,\u201d Lavino complained. \u201cIt\u2019s not even just about dinner anymore \u2014 people just want to say they went,\u201d which is increasingly changing NYC\u2019s restaurant scene.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old told The Post that now she and her friends, weary of fighting for their right to party, have gotten in the habit of walking around Manhattan aimlessly on a Friday night \u2014\u00a0eventually settling for an easier-to-get-into venue.<\/p>\n

These days, Lavino and friend, Sean Abrams, find themselves settling for a table at any restaurant to have somewhere to eat since everywhere else is so hard to get in. <\/p>\n

Trying to beat the crowds is one thing \u2014\u00a0but the idea that someone else is gaming the system only makes the frustration worse, Lavino said.<\/p>\n

Within recent years, third-party sellers have been increasingly using bots to secure spots and other tools to snap up prime reservations before regular diners can, then reselling them for a fee, which the National Restaurant Association has called<\/a> the \u201cTicketmaster-ification\u201d of dining, according to Food & Wine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans can\u2019t compete with robots,\u201d Lavino sighed \u2014\u00a0saying that the simple act of going out to eat has now become a headache on par with trying to wrestle for a spot in limited-edition shoe or merchandise drops.<\/p>\n

Italian hotspot Torrisi is a restaurant that Fried and plenty of other New Yorkers yearn to eat at \u2014 but can\u2019t because the demand is so high. Paul Martinka<\/p>\n

So bad is the bot problem now that Governor Kathy Hochul signed a piece of legislation known as the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act in late 2024. The law, which took effect on Feb. 17, 2025, prohibits these third-party platforms from listing or selling restaurant reservations without a written agreement from the establishment.<\/p>\n

No longer were the bots permitted to use automated scripts and saved login credentials to book a table within milliseconds of it becoming available \u2014\u00a0eventually leading to a drastic drop in the now-illegal activity, though some of the shady platforms have now reportedly harnessed AI to help them work around regulations. <\/p>\n

Not that the machines aren\u2019t getting plenty of help from actual diners, said Cara Forgione, manager of Peasant, an Italian NoLita eatery. She told The Post that securing a table at a popular New York restaurant has always been a challenge, but that social media is a major culprit in making the process \u201ceven more intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uptown\u2019s The Polo Bar opens its reservations 30 days in advance, but still, diners struggle to find availability thanks to bots and AI concierges snagging tables within seconds of them opening up. James Messerschmidt<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have guests trying to book almost a year out for reservations or holidays, which typically doesn\u2019t work, as bookings normally go live 30 days or so in advance,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

And while diners often assume the problem is simply a lack of access, the restaurant side is juggling more variables than most people realize: tables held for walk-ins, owner requests, and the need to space out bookings so service doesn\u2019t fall apart.<\/p>\n

The most desirable slot, unsurprisingly, remains 7 p.m. at Peasant. <\/p>\n

Forgione\u2019s advice? \u201cSometimes a phone call or even just stopping in to talk to a real human can go a long way,\u201d she said to The Post. \u201cI would just make sure to respect the answer that is given.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vicki Freeman, restaurateur and co-owner of Shukette and Cookshop in Chelsea, among other trendy spots downtown, told The Post that diners will often slide into her DMs begging for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone once told me her mother was dying and it was her last wish to have brunch at Cookshop,\u201d Freeman told The Post. Other times, she said, people she has not heard from in years suddenly reappear and \u201cbecome my best friend. It usually starts with how we must get together soon. The reservation request comes next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the pandemic, Freeman said, the coveted dinner reservation was between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Now demand is far earlier, around 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. She says people still want to go out, but they also want to be home at a reasonable hour.<\/p>\n

At the same time, she said, diners are becoming more aware of tools that promise an advantage, whether through early booking access, alerts, or paid platforms. The broader dining culture, she suggested, has taken on \u201ca sense of competitive urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some restaurant owners say stopping by or even calling to talk to a real human can go a long way. Monkey Business \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople also want to go to the hot place first, not only to boast, but most importantly to post about it,\u201d she told The Post.<\/p>\n

For Max Chodorow, one of the owners of the posh Lafayette Street restaurant Jean\u2019s that serves a $65 French dip, that urgency comes in the form of an avalanche of emails \u201cfrom people with all sorts of outrageous stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Large-party requests are especially intense, which is part of why Jean\u2019s now requires approval for anything over six and closely manages what goes live online and when.<\/p>\n

Then there is the hoarding problem. Chodorow said diners now routinely book \u201c2-3 places for a Friday a month out\u201d and decide at the last minute which one to keep, which leaves restaurants scrambling to refill prime seats, even if demand is technically there. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one wants to charge a cancellation fee,\u201d he told The Post, \u201cbut there really isn\u2019t an option anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Securing a table at a top NYC restaurant has long required some planning and a great deal of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4544,68,289,4686,232,57,9,56,63,65,64,821,4015,21203],"class_list":["post-198080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-chefs","tag-exclusive","tag-food-drink","tag-influencers","tag-lifestyle","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-restaurants","tag-social-media","tag-the-polo-bar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}