Fine dining restaurants researching guests to make their dinner unforgettable
81 comments
·July 13, 2025prasadjoglekar
The title seems ominous but the article itself is about how a fancy restaurant will go out of it's way to make you feel special. They're perusing your social media for clues.
In the past your spouse or kid would call and let the maitre'd know it was special; now I guess it's a job for someone on staff.
steveBK123
Until some YC backed SaaS LLM AI automates the process and it becomes table stakes. Then they find other uses for it..
CoastalCoder
> and it becomes table stakes.
I see what you did there.
hungmung
I'm waiting for fully automated writing style recognition that finds all your throwaway accounts and sends you a shakedown letter.
satvikpendem
Reproducing Hacker News writing style fingerprinting, by antirez of Redis fame
brookst
Are we really doing the slippery slope dangers of a high end restaurant going out of their way to delight?
atmavatar
If they're already vetting your social media, they can also start refusing service based upon religious or political leanings displayed in your posts. No slope (slippery or otherwise) is required.
Imagine making reservations for a family dinner but being turned away at the door because the restaurant found a post (in support/critical) of Trump or one of his policies. The restaurant would be completely within its rights to do so, even if it seems a stupid and pointless business decision to cut clientele in half.
closewith
Unlawful in the EU, thankfully. The US seriously needs to revaluate it's data protection laws.
dang
Thanks! We've changed the title above to use a more representative phrase from the article.
mousethatroared
Still creepy.
jjmarr
Reminds me of The Menu.
satvikpendem
Reminds me of The Bear which has scenes like this. It is quite common in higher end restaurant, like those at the Michelin level to customize the experience for each guest (at least to a small degree, not necessarily changing out the entire menu for them).
pbh101
Which itself draws from the book ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’ and iirc the Chicago restaurant ‘Ever’ featured in the show applies this approach.
mingus88
The Bear is literally the lead-in paragraph for the article
yieldcrv
Going to The French Laundry has many similar to The Menu and felt like it was what the movie was satirizing
satvikpendem
The Menu is specifically satirizing the show Chef's Table [0]. Notice the same sort of music and compositon of the plates as well as the font.
fnord77
author doesn't understand the definition of "vetting"
which is par for the course for sfgate/chronicle
astrange
Good opportunity to learn about SingleThread, which is a 90s-style throwback to when it was impossible to learn anything about Japan so people just made things up. Like, they call their customers "chairman of the board" because they just heard a random word somewhere?
Japanese customer service ("omotenashi") is mostly about not listening to your customers. You get exactly what they want to give you and that's it. If you have a dietary restriction they may just kick you out because they won't/can't change the menu.
rglover
So this is basically a modern approach to Danny Meyer's (Union Square Hospitality Group [1]) "collecting the dots" he described in his book Setting the Table [2].
His suggestion was to have staff listen to conversations (and have conversations with guests) and then record any interesting "dots" like a child having a graduation coming up or an anniversary just around the corner. That way on their next visit the staff could be well-prepared.
Click-bait headline makes you think otherwise, but this is just standard hospitality stuff.
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Setting-Table-Transforming-Hospitalit...
Hnrobert42
Privacy concerns aside, I would be mortified if a restaurant did something special for me. I don't want extra attention. I don't want to have to pretend to be excited about a beverage I don't really care for or a gift I will just throw away.
Now if you will excuse, I see some clouds at which I need to shake my cane.
CoastalCoder
What if their special thing for you was to treat you like a truly genetic customer?
I.e., like what Leslie Knope did for Run Swanson on his birthday.
asdf6969
Maybe I’ll start taking pictures of the owners kids playing in the yard so I can establish a better relationship with the business and get better service. Why else would they be in public?
satvikpendem
It's funny to read these comments, of course HN would react this way but since the vast majority of restaurant patrons are so-called normies, it doesn't make much sense to cater to HNers. In fact, most normal people actually prefer that restaurants know their interests and cater to them, it leads to their higher satisfaction and makes the restaurant experience (which includes more than just the taste of the food, for most people at least) more memorable overall.
sublinear
I don't see what's so normal about any of this. In the past your friends would just mention a few hints while making the reservation... and people still do this now.
If they need to scan your social media, that speaks volumes about how you socialize and the quality of those interactions. Plenty of "normal" people don't want this either. The thoughts mean more coming from your friends than a creepy restaurant.
JumpCrisscross
I’m genuinely confused by people who find it creepy that their public social media be scanned and analysed. You made it public!
sublinear
The creepy part isn't what, but why. The article later mentions a place that is "old school" and actually talks to their patrons.
If the goal is to attract and keep patrons, especially at a high end restaurant where details matter, I think some formalities are still reasonably expected.
satvikpendem
You're proving my point. Only do people on HN care, I've never heard of anyone "normal" expressing concern over this sort of restaurant policy, and doubly so if they made their entire account public in the first place. By all means, friends can mention a few hints, but that doesn't mean that restaurants won't do their own research.
> If they need to scan your social media, that speaks volumes about how you socialize and the quality of those interactions.
No, it doesn't, and I don't see how you came to the conclusion that if a restaurant had to scan my social media that it says anything about how I socialize. People don't just socialize only on social media, you know.
sublinear
All I'm saying is if I'm important to the business they should take the time to know me in person, not try to leverage technology to make this more efficient. The customer is not cattle.
If my friends care, they will know what to surprise me with better than someone who glanced online as a rote part of their job.
cyberge99
I wonder if there’s ever been a case of mistaken identity. A bear lover instead of a penguin lover for example.
dceddia
These comments are such a great pointer to the way outrage is engineered.
fsflover
Can you elaborate?
dceddia
The title implies (well, I'd say explicitly states with the word "vetting") that restaurants are trying to filter guests, maybe to avoid troublesome ones with uncouth posts online or something. And many of the comments are replying to that interpretation, based on the unfairness suggested in the title. It's not only clickbait, it's outrage bait, designed to spark anger.
The article itself is about how restaurants have gone above and beyond for some guests where they've been able to tell from their social media that they're celebrating a special occasion or some other thing like that. To make the guests' experience better and memorable.
There's a privacy angle to this, should restaurants do that, slippery slope, etc etc... but many of the comments aren't talking about that. They're responding to the inflammatory title.
I don't think we often get such a clear picture into the why behind online outrage and how clearly manufactured it can often be. I think it's easy to believe people are angry for a good reason, to take the anger "on good faith" in some sense. In this case, with the title being so far from the article, it's clear to see what's going on. And makes one wonder about the rest of the outrage out there.
borski
I couldn’t agree more. Half the reason I posted it was the aggressive title; I was curious to see what would happen, and it was precisely what I expected heh.
The other half of the reason was that I really did think it was an interesting article. But having to keep the title the same was a fascinating social experiment.
vicurve
You know how you sometimes read a title or a topic and you can infer the kind of commentary a particular topic will have? Even going so far as to expect words like “enshittification” to be used for both stating a point as well as for in-group signaling? Sort of like how opinions are front-loaded even if the article was read? (And very often the opinions are things we’ve heard before from many other people, this is a given).
Well, we’ve entered a period in manufactured outrage on the internet where an audience is primed ahead of time with talking points and perspectives that are deemed allowed, and then these reflexes are triggered over and over by the same kind of articles. And it’s the frenzy that counts.
It used to be confined to FB and other places but the average commenter has changed and so the average commentary has changed.
Articles are increasingly becoming rage bait, moreso than clickbait. I do not know what the appeal is yet but I imagine it’s some mixture of impulsivity that online commenting has enabled, combined with commenters thinking their take is valid/important/whatever. Maybe narcissistic but I can’t say for sure. At any rate, it’s another good way to destroy a community - especially one with self reinforcing mechanism like voting that basically ensures you’re on rails (with apologies to dhh)
alganet
It is expected that filtering based on digital content will become a thing for a while. It's one of those obvious, but misguided, uses of recent technologies.
I don't know about restaurants, but in regards to other kinds of silos, it is likely that those filters will go down once quality data availability becomes a problem.
In the restaurant analogy, you can say that if the salloon is empty, they'll let people in because they can't survive without them.
smitelli
I gotta say, I don't have the right personality traits to enjoy this kind of personal attention a lot of the time.
I've had experiences where the counter staff at my daily breakfast place started to recognize me and know what "usual" my order was going to be without my having to say it... and it really weirded me out more than anything else.
Sometimes I just want to be a faceless nobody, forgotten day after day by the businesses I visit and the public spaces I navigate.
JumpCrisscross
> I don't have the right personality traits to enjoy this kind of personal attention a lot of the time
Have friends who work at the Four Seasons. This—low service interaction—is a common type of personalised attention patrons want.
I don’t think there is a social media cue for it. But even as someone who’s fairly extroverted, I got a note indicating I should be left alone if dining alone and reading.
mingus88
Yeah I’m heavily introverted and feel the same way. It establishes a kind of social pressure that if I fail to hold up my side of the relationship I just get anxious
satvikpendem
If you go so often that people remember you, I mean, what do you expect, that they somehow block the memory of you from their mind?
steveBK123
Social Credit Score, but privatized
kube-system
Of which, the name comes from the US concept of “credit score” which was always privatized.
yieldcrv
Americans only care that the organization that can kill and arrest isn’t controlling all facets of life
But are tolerant that corporations do the exact same things in their society
jqpabc123
Seems like the potential start of a dystopian nightmare to me.
Wouldn't be better for all concerned if a 2 star restaurant worked at providing better food and service instead of privacy invasion and exploitation of the vain?
AznHisoka
There are exactly 2 restaurants I recommend to people, and invite family/friends to when they’re visiting.
Absolutely none of these restaurants know who I am, do anything special for me, or even know my favorite dishes.
The only thing they have in common is they consistently make delicious tasting food. And they probably focus a lot on doing that. Its that simple.
CoastalCoder
I assume you're referring to Jacques Imo's in New Orleans, then :)
zacharycohn
For people who go to these restaurants, this is better service. You wouldn't find this happening at Red Robin. This is what they are paying for.
If it's not for you, that's fine.
sublinear
I think you totally could replicate these experiences without the restaurant involved. Fun surprises are nice, but the absurdity of having the restaurant provide these kinds of experiences seems tacky.
I don't think I'm alone in wanting the restaurant's personality to be just as much a part of the experience as my own personality. Otherwise, what makes this place more special than any other wanting to pull the same gimmicks?
sublinear
Despite much hype, past a certain point even the highest end food really is... just food.
The service is what people really pay for, and there I agree that there should be much more interesting ideas to elevate the experience than bringing in a baby penguin. I don't see anything in the article as particularly creative.
JumpCrisscross
> past a certain point even the highest end food really is... just food
That point is still well up there. The difference between hours-picked tomatoes and Aramark sludge is worth paying for.
It must be emphasised that they're doing this with public information and presumably whatever else you've implicitly consented to giving them, so I don't see a problem with that. Nonetheless this isn't the experience I'd want from a restaurant, and fortunately there are plenty of others to choose from.