Commencement: The Fight for a Restaurant Reservation
Friday, May 27, 2011
When Providence’s universities and colleges send their senior class into the real world, making reservations for a celebratory dinner can be tougher than getting in to those schools in the first place.
During the graduation weekends for Brown, RISD, Johnson and Wales and Providence College respectively, the number of visitors that flood the city has made acquiring a restaurant booking a bit of a competitive sport. Brown’s Commencement, this coming weekend, is perhaps the busiest weekend of the year for Providence’s top restaurants and reserving a table in this ebullient atmosphere requires some persistent pre-planning.
The race starts early
Some restaurants begin accepting reservations up to a year in advance and most of their tables fill up by late March. Bacaro estimates they filled up in February, Gracie’s in March, Al Forno and Local 121 filled up a month ago.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“I was shocked,” says Morgan LaCroix, the front of the house manager at Gracie’s, says, “It’s my third May in Providence and comparable to last year, this year filled up really, really fast.”
Now, Gracie’s waitlist is 10-12 parties deep, but LaCroix says they just took three people on Tuesday of last week; when a group of fifteen cancels, it opens up a lot of table space. Though Al Forno they didn’t completely fill up until April, now their waitlist is two pages long—about 30 different parties total.
Contracts, penalty fees
Because Commencement weekend is one of the busiest weekends of the year, some restaurants implement penalty policies to ensure that parties show up. At Bacaro clients sign a full-fledged reservation contract. Penalties for cancelations range from a charge of $25 a head at Local 121 and Gracie’s (though Gracie’s returns the amount per head in a gift certificate to the canceled party) and $100 for every seat that left vacant at Bacaro.
However, at Al Forno—the restaurant that is thought to be the most difficult to reserve for a graduation party—there are no monetary penalties of any sort. Cozzens says that as of a year ago, they stopped asking their clients to sign contracts. “We just really like to keep it simple and very approachable,” she says, “If someone goes to the trouble to make a reservation, they usually follow through.”
Protecting against last-minute changes
Nancy Miller, the co-owner of Local 121, says that they began taking credit card information because parties on graduation weekends tend to be enormous and constantly shifting. When clients make a reservation so far in advance, their plans and numbers are more likely to change. The grandaunt decides to attend, the kid brother wants to bring a friend, or the cousins decide to cancel.
On these weekends particularly, the clients are also more likely to be distracted; the social engagements are numerous: awards ceremonies, cocktail parties, last goodbyes. “It’s a chaotic affair,” Jennifer Motta, one of the owners of Bacaro restaurant, says, “People call confused about whether they booked for Friday or Saturday.” Or worse, she says, they will show up on the wrong night.
A rare night in the dining rooms
Motta continues that the crowd of graduates and their families transforms the feel of the restaurant that evening: “It becomes like a country club atmosphere in the dining room. All the families know each other. They get up from one another’s table and send bottles of champagne across the room.”
Suzette Cozzens, Al Forno’s front of the house manager, echoes this sentiment: “There are presents and a lot more candles. The atmosphere is just charged with a wonderful energy.”
But with this celebratory invasion, the restaurant also loses out on local business that weekend. Motta says that the regular clientele quips about graduation weekend months ahead of time: “They know they won’t be dining with us. I think the locals in Providence try to bunker down.”
While there are drawbacks to this flood of reservations the last few weeks of May, Cozzens says that that she and the staff at Al Forno look forward to it: “We love this weekend,” she says, “A lot of work goes into it, but it’s very exciting.”
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