Joshua D.
Yelp
Beware of the bait and switch!
We wanted to try something new and were in the mood for Italian. After a quick search on Yelp (of course) we found Bella Vita with great reviews and appetizing images. After visiting their website, they directed us to their preferred service for reservations (Resy) and we were happy to see they had some times available. It was a little bit of a drive (30 min), so we booked with enough time to get ready and drive without rushing.
About 15 minutes before our reservation was scheduled (and confirmed), we get a call from the restaurant that unless we wanted to move from the dining room to the patio, they could not honor our reservation. I asked why not, since we had a confirmed reservation for the dining room, and was told that the dining room was only for people with reservations (huh?) and they had a lot of people already waiting. When I pushed back that we had a reservation, they said they were too busy. Frustrated, I asked them to cancel the reservation.
That evening, I contacted the restaurant to find out what went wrong. After some back and forth, they blamed Resy for assigning us to a patio seat from the beginning. I let them know that I would be reaching out to Resy about the issue, but that since they knew it was an issue (remember, they called me about the change) they should have communicated better about the change, and not wait until so close to the reservation time. They said they were busy.
When I reached out to Resy, they confirmed what I had suspected the entire time - Resy doesn't control the inventory selected by the restaurant for reservations. The restaurant had added their patio seating as available "dining room" seating to increase availability on the app, and then inform the customer of the change once they were already committed. For anyone who has used Resy, you know that they give restaurants the option to specify different seating types when making a reservation, but no options were offered by Bella Vita - it was all dining room.
In the end, I'm glad we skipped this restaurant because if you can't be honest with your customers to get them in the door, you can't be trusted to provide good food or service once you've been seated.