Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a new state law that targets apps that make restaurant reservations available — for a price. We’ll also get details on entries in the notebook Luigi Mangione was carrying when he was apprehended in Pennsylvania.
Before the waiter brings the check, some customers in pricey Manhattan restaurants have paid for the privilege of being there. They booked the table through third-party services that make reservations available — for a price.
A table for two at Carbone tonight could be had for $255, according to one such service on Thursday.
Such services connect people who are willing to pay with people who have snagged hard-to-get reservations. But services that use bots are the targets of a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said that it would clamp down on “the predatory black market for restaurant reservations.”
Supporters of the law say that apps snatch up prime-time slots as soon as they appear on reservation platforms like Resy, which specifies that users cannot sell or trade reservations they have made through its site. Hochul, in a memo explaining her decision to sign the bill, said that apps that grab “the most in-demand reservations are getting an unfair advantage over both diners and restaurants.” She said that she supported the effort “to level the playing field.”
The measure, passed by the Assembly and the State Senate in June, prohibits third-party reservation services from arranging “unauthorized” reservations. The law would do that by requiring reservation apps to get a restaurant’s consent in writing before the app makes reservations at that restaurant.
Pablo Rivero, the chief executive of Resy, called the new law “a major step forward in the industry’s effort to protect restaurants and diners from reservation fraud.”
Debby Soo, the chief executive of the platform OpenTable, noted that “restaurants run on razor-thin profit margins.” She added: “Any steps to protect their operations and financial health — two specific areas where piracy is most harmful — are crucial.”
Nathalia Fernandez, a state senator who was a sponsor of the bill, said that it targeted resellers “who cause chaos for restaurants with last-minute cancellations and no-shows, leaving tables empty and hardworking staff without tips.”
Bots that hoard reservations have “wreaked havoc” on front- and back-of-the-house operations, said Melissa Fleischut, the president and chief executive of the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group. If the bots do not resell reservations they had lined up, maîtres d’hôtel cannot “take someone standing right in front of them” who has simply walked in, she said.
Reservation sites also throw things off behind the scenes, she said: “Food and beverage orders, employee schedules and many other aspects of a restaurant rely on accurately predicting how many customers will show on a given night.”
Jonas Frey, who started the marketplace site Appointment Trader, said that sellers on the site have to sell at least 50 percent of the reservations they upload. As for bots, “we actually stopped that,” he said, “because that just generates no-shows and cancellations.” He said that Appointment Trader refunded restaurants’ no-show fees to its sellers when customers did not keep reservations.
Frey said the average price for a reservation on Appointment Trader is $80, except in the fourth quarter of the year, when “it does go up.”
“Most tech businesses thrive if they make some sort of luxury business available for anybody,” Frey said in an interview. “If we were turned off tomorrow, I don’t believe that anyone would be able to get a Carbone or Tatiana reservation. I think the people who are not wealthy and not connected would not have any way to get it.”
He said in a post on Appointment Trader that “it is also interesting to see that this bill is exclusively backed by restaurants, restaurant associations and a credit card company” — a reference to American Express, which owns Resy — “but not one consumer agency, which does not make sense.”
Weather
This morning, there is a chance of rain and snow. In the afternoon, expect a cloudy sky and a high in the upper 30s. Tonight, rain and snow are likely, with temperatures falling to the low 30s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Dec. 25 (Christmas Day).
The latest metro news
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Affordability crisis: Families in Washington Heights are being pushed out by rising rents and costs, and New York City is losing its youngest demographic group.
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Drone ban: The Federal Aviation Administration issued a monthlong ban on drone flights near “critical infrastructure” in New Jersey, the first broad prohibition of its kind since the authorities began investigating sightings last month.
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Fox News meets City Hall: Mayor Eric Adams invited Martha MacCallum of Fox News into City Hall for a sit-down interview. He criticized the Biden administration and did not take aim at President-elect Donald Trump.
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A forthcoming defamation suit: Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo submitted a notice that he intended to file a defamation lawsuit against a former aide who was one of the first women to accuse him of sexual harassment when he was in office.
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Class-action lawsuit: New York City agreed to pay $92.5 million to the more than 20,000 immigrants who were unlawfully detained beyond their scheduled release dates. Lawyers involved in the suit now must find people who faced deportation at least a decade ago.
Mangione is brought to New York
In the notebook that Luigi Mangione was carrying when he was arrested in Pennsylvania — separate from the note addressed to “feds” that the authorities called a manifesto — were entries that expressed “hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular,” according to a federal criminal complaint.
One entry was marked “8/15” and was apparently written in August, nearly two months before Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down on a Manhattan street. The entry said that “the details are finally coming together.”
It said that the writer had “procrastinated.” He did not explain how or why but said that he was glad that he had, because he had gained more time to learn about UnitedHealthcare, according to the complaint.
Two months later, on Oct. 22, another notebook entry described an upcoming investor conference as “a true windfall” and described what the complaint called “an intent to ‘wack’” the chief executive of an insurance company. The description in the entry corresponds with the UnitedHealthcare investor conference that Thompson was on his way to when he was killed.
My colleague Benjamin Weiser writes that the complaint was released as federal prosecutors filed four charges against Mangione, including a murder count that could bring the death penalty. The federal charges were filed two days after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed state murder and terror charges.
Mangione appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan on Thursday and was detained without bail. He spoke only briefly during the 15-minute hearing, answering “yes” twice, first when the judge, Katherine Parker, asked if he understood the charges and again when she asked if he had seen a copy of the complaint.
His lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, was unhappy with what she called the “highly unusual situation we find ourselves in,” one that she called “confusing.” She said that when the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, announced the charges against Mangione, there had been “absolutely no mention that Mr. Mangione was going to be charged federally.”
She also said that the theory of the federal case was different from the theory of the state case and that the two appeared to conflict. Bragg had said on Wednesday that the state case would proceed in parallel with any federal prosecution.
Mangione’s hearing with Judge Parker was his second court appearance on Thursday. He first appeared at an extradition hearing at the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa. He left with New York City police officers who took him to an airport for a flight to Long Island MacArthur Airport and, from there, on a helicopter ride to Manhattan.
When he stepped off the helicopter, he was surrounded by at least 40 police officers and F.B.I. agents, as well as Mayor Eric Adams, who is facing corruption charges brought by prosecutors from the same office that filed the terrorism charges against Mangione. Also on hand were Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, and Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives.
METROPOLITAN diary
Unusual Pause
Dear Diary:
I was walking to work down Park Avenue from 72nd Street on a beautiful spring morning.
I saw a slender, well-groomed man in a nicely tailored suit walking ahead of me. He was carrying an impressive briefcase.
As we got to 62nd Street, the man approached a building that had a shiny, black marble facade. He set his briefcase down inches from the wall and then, to my horror, licked the marble wall.
After a moment, he retrieved his briefcase and continued on his way.
— Patricia von Buelow
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Table for 2 at Tatiana? There Used to Be a Bot for That. appeared first on New York Times.
