On a recent Saturday at People’s, a bar in Greenwich Village, young people dressed in silk dresses and designer tees danced and drank martinis until 2 a.m.
Everyone in the room was a friend, a friend-of-a-friend or a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend of the owners Emmet McDermott, a filmmaker, and Margot Hauer-King, a marketer.
But it wasn’t a private party. It was just any other night at People’s, one of a handful of new bars and restaurants around the world that require an invitation from the establishment to enter. People’s, which opened in December, refers to its system as “reservation by referral.”
At a time when trendy restaurants and mom-and-pop shops alike are mobbed by TikTok-influenced crowds, a smattering of businesses are turning to an invite-only model to curate the scene. Handpicking everyone who walks through the door means they can finely tailor service and, they hope, better cater to individual customers. And limiting entries, naturally, builds up hype.
At People’s, the owners were trying to find a way to keep their establishment exclusive without having to charge for membership or closely manage public-facing reservations.
“It’s trying to solve a very practical challenge right now in New York,” Ms. Hauer-King said. “People don’t feel that they had a space that they truly belonged to, and that was theirs, and that they would run into their friends, and they’d also meet someone they’re really glad they met — and that they could get a table without paying $5,000.”
Some places aren’t just hard to get into; they’re hard to find. Hori is an eight-seat invite-only izakaya inside a Midtown ceramics studio that opened at the end of May. “Some people have found out the address and they try to walk in,” said Keisuke Oku, a director of Hand Hospitality, which owns Hori. “We politely explain to them that this is invite-only.”
Jon Krinn, a longtime chef in Fairfax, Va., turned to an invite-only model to reward loyal patrons.
“I wanted to show appreciation for my clientele who has enabled me to do what I do for so long,” he said. So when he opened his fourth restaurant, Elyse, in February 2024, he decided to make it what he called “a private restaurant.”
Mr. Krinn was in a privileged position to do so. “Anyone around the world who can do this has established a lot of trust in their area and has a lot of demand,” he said. Success depends largely on the size of the place, he added. Elyse is a 30-seat tasting-menu restaurant; it is much more difficult to adhere to an invitation model if you have a 100 seats to fill.
These businesses are creating their own systems for inviting patrons in. At People’s, the owners created a list of 300 friends to whom they emailed a booking link, asking those people to send the link to their friends, who sent the link to their friends. (For fun, they also hid a reservation email on the website “like an Easter egg,” Mr. McDermott said.)
There were challenges at first. “It was not full at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday,” he said. “In the first couple of months it was like, ‘Hold your nerve, hold your nerve, hold your nerve.’” The owners were so determined to stick to this model that they sent out a new booking link to their contacts after a TikTok influencer publicized it.
It paid off. Now the lounge, which has 75 seats, is full from Wednesday to Sunday. “We see the organic word of mouth taking root,” he said.
At Elyse, Mr. Krinn sent a newsletter with a private reservation link to 4,500 people, generating plenty of buzz. “There was nothing about the restaurant online, there had been no media about it, but people told their friends,” he said. “My special V.I.P. clientele that I had developed over the years were the ones getting the word out, but only to people they felt would appreciate it.”
Other establishments make prospective visitors work for an invite. An invitation to dine at Sabor de mi Rancho in San Diego comes only after substantially engaging with the business, a small patio restaurant serving Mexican food, on social media. On Instagram, the owners Arturo and Minnie Ramirez outline all the ways to do so: following, messaging, liking and commenting on videos and stories. (“Impatient and disrespectful people will definitely not be invited,” the post reads.)
Some patrons say they cherish a visit to an invite-only restaurant even more after being selected. Others say it creates higher expectations.
It took Samantha Zamora, a stay-at-home mother in San Diego, about a month to get her invitation to Sabor de mi Rancho. She would like or react to every story the business posted, sometimes with a clapping or fire emoji, and comment on posts, too.
In July, she finally received a message on Instagram thanking her for her support and inviting her to dine there the following Sunday. “There was so much built up excitement for it, I think it made it better,” said Ms. Zamora, 29. “Also the food was so good. My mother-in-law is a great cook herself, but she said the menudo was the best she’s ever had.”
On a recent trip to London, Mathilda Hill-Smith, who works for her family’s winery in Adelaide, Australia, received an invitation from a friend to visit the Fat Badger, an exclusive pub in Notting Hill that once hosted the actress Margot Robbie’s birthday party.
At the restaurant above the ground-floor saloon, there are no menus. Each night, the restaurant serves a different four-course meal with dishes like nettle soup, lobster tacos, big cuts of beef and brown sugar tarts.
“So many people were like, ‘How did you get that reservation? It’s so cool that you are going,’” said Ms. Hill-Smith, 30. “It definitely felt even cooler than a members club because you can’t even apply to get in.”
However, she was also worried the model heightened her expectations. “It could have just been a marketing gimmick,” she said of the restaurant’s policy, which has since changed to include standard reservations. “It would have fallen on its face if the food and service weren’t good.”
Like the Fat Badger, some invite-only restaurants eventually open their doors to the general public. Last September, Casa Bonita, a theatrical Mexican restaurant outside of Denver with puppet shows and cliff divers, introduced reservations after 15 months of exclusivity.
Eight months after opening Elyse, Mr. Krinn did the same. “At some point I felt like I was putting too much pressure on that group to make the business thrive,” he said.
Still, those V.I.P.s get first dibs on a table.
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