These Restaurants Have Ditched Reservation Apps - Eater NY
"When Tina Vaughn opened Eulalie, the intimate French American restaurant in Tribeca she runs with her husband, chef Chip Smith, she set up her reservation system thoughtfully. She connected her landline. She arranged her new pencils in a glass. She set her reservation book next to her old Rolodex, crowded with creased cards. She began to answer the phone and write down reservations in neat script with personalized notes. Vaughn is a throwback, eschewing apps like Resy and OpenTable, and even Instagram, rewinding to Luddite days of landlines and hulking reservations books, where connections grew from conversations, not clicks. At Eulalie, her relationship to her customers begins with her voicemail message, where she sounds more like a bestie than a serious restaurateur. While some may roll their eyes at the idea of making a phone call to speak to a real person for a reservation, Vaughn says customers are happy to find a human on the other end of a phone line." - Andrea Strong
