How would you feel if the package you ordered didn’t get delivered without any calls? Also what if your friends don’t show up even though you made a promise? I’m sure that whoever gets treatments like these might be furious. However these kinds of happenings actually occur a lot recently. We call this situation, “No-Show.” No-show is a very common form of act in Korea. Customers trick shop keepers by “not going” or “canceling” the registration, without feeling any guilt. However, many shop owners and companies are actually stressed and they’ve gone through hardships because of these situations.
I’ve interviewed a chef about how serious this problem is. Mr. Do is the owner of “Gacheura”, a Japanese restaurant. This restaurant is well known as a “delicious place” so I asked him some questions about the “No-shows” at his restaurant.
Q1) Have you ever experienced “No-shows” at your restaurant, and if you have, what was the worst case?
Yes, I have experienced a few. The worst case was when 8 seats had been reserved for the sushi-counter, and 5 seats were canceled.
Q2) What damages are there if reserved customers cancel their booking?
If people book for the seat in sushi-counter, we thaw the high quality fish such as tuna by the number of people. The defrosted tuna is hard to be reused. Since we used these kinds of high-quality materials, No shows at our place result in serious food damages and money loss as well.
Q3) Does your restaurant have special treatment to prevent these situations?
Yes. We save the phone number of the “No-show” customers and we prevent them from making reservations in the future
This is the picture of how this restaurant would prepare for the reserved customers. They prepare all of the settings and defrost the fishes.
Q4) What do you think the “No-show” is, and what is the solution to this problem?
I think the problem comes out from consumers’ way of thinking that not a serious problem will occur if I don’t show up at that place. To solve this problem, I think we should change those consumers’ thinking and to do that, we should have a prepayment system.
(Gacheura is located in Deurangil Food Town in Daegu.)
From a talk with him, I could feel how frustrated he gets if customers don’t show up for their reservations and how serious the situation is. However, situations like these are very frequent in Korea lately, even though it causes many problems. Some might think their selfish actions might not do any harm to others, or feel troublesome to cancel all the bookings they’ve done. They should realize that their actions can cause a lot of food waste in many ways. It not only does harm to shop owners or companies but also gives discomfort to other customers.
We should realize that it is not a trivial or minor problem at all. This is a serious problem that we should solve. But compared with how critical this problem is, the way to solve it is pretty simple. We have to have the basic etiquettes for others. If we couldn’t go to a place where we made reservation, just call and cancel it. It’s not a hard thing to do, but by doing this, the results will totally change.
Kim Chai-Rin
Grade: Freshmen
Herald Global Pre-University
By Kim Chai-Rin