“Reserved” — a tale of booze on the blockchain
“Reservation?”
Josh stops Miss Emma in the doorway.
She lives two blocks from Hervie’s. She’s addicted to strong Italian coffee, the kind you can’t fix at home with a little gadget purchased at Tesco for 10 quids. It takes that massive industrial machine only a café or a bar can afford. She can explain to you how the water pressure, the type of grind, the way the coffee was roasted, and other important factors make a difference.
As a regular she thinks herself immune to any change to the bar. She just walked in Hervie’s after being away for a few weeks and is stopped by Josh, the bartender. “Reservation?”
She gives him a look. This is the sleepier part of Brighton, not Las Vegas or the French Riviera.
He leans closer. “I know the feeling. When you’re a regular, you’re expected to let a group of thirsty tourists sit at your table, because they’re going to drink dozens of beers while you’re sitting with a single cappuccino for hours. Or the awkward moment when you stand behind a seat touching its back gently and asking ‘May I?’, and you already know the answer looking at their faces. Or a friend arrives unexpectedly from New Zealand.”
Miss Emma interjects, “I have no friend in New Zealand.”
Josh is unstoppable, “I do. Now imagine she just arrives and is in a desperate need of sharing a whisky with you and pouring out her soul in front of you, and you spend forty minutes wandering on the streets, looking for a bar where you can sit down and have some privacy. She doesn’t start her story, because, you know, you’re almost there, you almost order that whisky, and you finally end up in a crowded bar, and stand by the counter crammed between a drunken rocker and a stinky punk. All that wandering around without a reservation.
“That era is gone, thanks to the reservation app, Reservie, as we call it.
“Its official name was Venue Master, but this name stuck, so the company renamed it Reservie to honor its users. With Reservie night life has become a lot easier. All the annoyances are gone. The moment my friend from New Zealand knocks at the door and her mouth forms the words ‘whisky’, I immediately pull out my phone and tap on Reservie.
“Not all bars are members of the network, there are other reservation networks, they say some are pretty decent, but I’m staying with Reservie, that’s where I started and I think it’s the biggest one. Even if you live in a deserted part of a suburb where the next bar is a good five minute walk, chances are most bars are already on Reservie, so you’re a tap away from insuring your place in the blessed universe of beers and whiskies.”
Miss Emma nods, “yeah, I’m so impressed. But you know me, Josh. If I come here in the night, I’ll consider using this Reservie thingy. Now please let me in. What a stupid name, by the way.”
“Reservation?”
“At 9 A.M.?”
“Reservation knows no day and night. I mean it’s of course not the same to have a reservation for 9 am as for 9 pm. That would be a neat trick to hack the system, you book a seat for 9AM and show up twelve hours later, haha, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work this way. This is not a human you can bribe, this is a solid, cryptographically something system, I don’t remember, but it’s pretty massive. Even black belt hackers tried to hack it, and they failed. They say it’s safer than your bank, unless, of course, you’re using the bank this system is connected to.”
“I don’t have a reservation, young man, either for now, or for 9 pm.”
“I’m afraid you can’t get in.”
“Reserved.” Sometimes it’s only a carefully folded piece of paper printed with this on either side. Sometimes the sign gets fancier, the more elegant the bar or restaurant, the fancier the design. It takes a second for a hand to place it on a table, but what a journey it actually is.
Imagine a random customer of Hervie’s Bar. In the first place, he knows this bar exists and has the impulse to visit us with his new girlfriend or boyfriend. This wonderful idea visits him in the morning, he’s the kind of person who has his best ideas in the shower. It’s too early to call the bar, so he makes a mental note to call it in his lunch break which he eventually does. It’s a long journey to get to this point compared to spontaneously entering the first cafe. The rest is easy. Josh, the bartender answers the phone, asks a few questions as to when, how many, where (by the window or an intimate corner in the back), and places the sign on the right table. “Reserved”.
Restaurants with a handful of Michelin stars don’t have such signs, either fancy, or plain. But they’re so fond of this concept that guests can’t dine their without making a reservation a month in advance.
Flights work with a reservation too. If you don’t want to pay that little extra, an algorithm carefully selects a random seat for you and your travel partner in opposite ends of the plane.
Josh feels he might’ve been too harsh. “Of course, you can download the app now and make a reservation. You see we have plenty of empty seats. I’m here to help you.” He makes a broad gesture. Only one guy is sitting here looking out of the window.
“Did fairies turn this drinkery into a posh restaurant overnight?”
“Not only is this a great system, it helps us, the staff, too. Back in the old days we couldn’t plan ahead, we had no clue how many guests would come. The manager or the owner usually solved this problem by hiring too few bartenders and waiters, so we spent half of the day leaning towards the wall, smoking cigarette after cigarette, telling stale jokes. Now with Reservie we can plan.”
A track record of two cups of coffee almost every day for eight years proves not enough. No amount of sarcastic questions and threatening remarks gets her past the young Kerberos.
Josh extends his hand for her phone, “let me install it for you.”
She jerks it away from him. He’s still the arch enemy in her eyes, the gatekeeper, the speedbump on the road.
Her fingers wander among the icons of the app. She wants to tap on Help, because she feels lost. He looks over her shoulder casually. “It’s Book a seat in the top left corner”, he whispers.
The next screen is easy. Select a date and time. The default is sensibly set to her favorite: today and now. Then her attitude changes the moment she makes it to the next screen.
It displays the prices of the most common drinks. The numbers on the screen flicker. “Josh, do you really want me to use this app?”
Josh starts to apologize, but Miss Emma cuts him mid-sentence. “A flickering number is not a flaw in the app. It means we’re looking at realtime data. Have you ever checked NASDAQ or any other stock exchange?”
This is way beyond Josh’s level, regardless of his experience with installing apps.
She’s getting more excited, “it means prices are changing. Beer at Hervie’s is subject to the same rules as Verizon or Ford stocks.”
“Beer has cost the same since I came here, 4.20 pounds a pint.”
She checks the app. “It says 3.80 pounds. Not bad for pricey Brighton. Who would have a beer this early?”
“I know some guys. But wait, it can’t be 3.80, prices go up, that much I know of economics, never down. And the boss didn’t tell me about changing the price, either.”
“Ok, what happens if I order a beer?”
“I’ll charge you 4.20.”
“What will the bill say?”
He shrugs, “Whatever the cash register prints.”
“Give it a try.”
“It doesn’t work this way. You have to order a beer and pay for it.”
“Hereby I order a beer, mister. If it costs 4.20, I pay double. But if the bill says 3.80, it’s on you.”
Josh hesitates for a moment, then starts to tap a beer, and slides it over the counter. He pushes a few buttons on the cash register and looks at the slip crawling out of it. The numbers don’t flicker, though, it’s still hard for him to make sense of them. 3.80.
“One more bet?” smiles Emma, “One quid the next guy to enter will wear a mustache. And while I’m at it, let me order a coffee for…” She checks the app, “1 pound?! That’s a bargain. Or a glitch in the system…”
Five minutes pass. A middle aged man enters the bar. He wears a mustache, but that seems beyond the point now. Josh is surprised, “Hervie, what are you doing here?” Emma looks at him, “Hervie as in Hervie’s bar?”
“Not everybody is called Starbucks.” He turns to Josh, “I got a notification from Reservie. It says Unfunded consumption error. What the hell does that mean?”
Josh is clueless, but he can’t show it, because…
“it was your idea to use this Reservie thing, now you’d better fix it. Did you have a bunch of tourists who ran away without paying or what?”
Emma says, “I can solve it for you, young man, it will cost you dearly if…”
“Don’t young man me, I’m not gonna pay you a penny.”
“Not me. You’re paying your guests. As soon as they find out about Reservie, they will come in flocks.”
“That’s exactly what this best of bartenders promised me too.” A scorning thumb points at Josh.
Is that a wicked smile on her face? “And they’ll pay you 3.80 for a beer and 1 quid for a coffee. You run the cheapest place in the neighborhood. I wonder how you can pay the staff and make a living from it.”
“What?”
“I just did that ten minutes ago. Presumably, that’s why you received a warning.”
Hervie’s pride melts away. “Carry on.”
“Let me give you an example. Suppose you could change the price any time as you like, it’s 9 pm, the bar is packed. Now I come and want to make a reservation and have a beer. How much would you charge?”
“Any price goes?”
She nods.
“6 pounds, not a penny less.” This is the price he always wanted to charge, no, this is actually more, but hey, this is only an illustration.
“Good. What happens if you charge that much?”
“What? I can give you an estimate, I’d make that night around …”
“I mean what would your guests do? Would they be happy to pay?”
“Depends on how drunk they are.”
“Hint: you’re not the only one on Reserve.”
“I see your point. They check the app — unless they’re too drink to do that. If it’s too expensive, they’ll simply go to the Check Mate Bar across the street. So I have to go down to 5.50 or even 5.00.”
Emma nods, “Let’s see this morning. What would you do if the place is empty?”
“Lower the prices. Sell the beer for 4.00, or 3.80 is still OK.”
“The introductory course to economy ends here. You found out what your Reservie system does.”
“But wait, you didn’t explain why it sold the coffee for an unreasonable price.”
“How much would you charge for a coffee then?”
“2 pounds, not a penny less.”
“And if nobody comes?”
“It would be a loss to go under that price. Wait. Now I understand. The app asks me what the economical prices are. I didn’t set any value because I didn’t understand that. Now I do. Your beer is on the house, ma’am.”
“It already is, young man. Josh lost a bet.”
“Ok, then you can young man me.”
She keeps quiet about one thing. If a bar or restaurant gets trendy, people will pay insane amounts of money to get in. It contradicts common sense and economy, but an 20% increase of the prices won’t scare them off. Restaurants with a handful of Michelin stars don’t calculate their prices based on common sense and rational behavior. Do you want to impress your date with a dinner with the crème de la crème, but all the seats are taken for a month in advance? You won’t mind paying a little (ha!) extra for a reservation that helps you skip the line. Yes, pay for the dinner and pay for the reservation.
Emma spends the next weeks doing a very simple thing, she books seats at many bars a few months ahead of time. It costs close to nothing, competition doesn’t exist, most users don’t even realize Reservie can be used this way. This feature is tucked away in a submenu of a submenu. Nobody in their right mind would plan a friendly drink two months in advance. When the date approaches, reservations at popular bars become more and more difficult, thus making its price go up. This is when Emma presents her offer, two seats in an already fully booked bar.
Most of her forecasts prove wrong. It’s not easy to tell which place will be favored by the folks, restaurant owners get it wrong, too. But getting it right once out of ten still produces a decent profit.
The center of operations is Hervie’s bar. Miss Emma sits by the window where she routinely reserved a table. She’s knee-deep in the app while half-listening to Josh’s story.
“I was in the Check Mate Bar, you know the one with the checkered floor tiles, so I figured I didn’t need more than a single tile to stand on. It’s amazing how little you need in life, at least in some cases. There was no empty tile to stand on. I could’ve left immediately, I could’ve headed to the door and left. I have no clue what made me stay, maybe laziness, because given a Friday night it made no sense to walk around, to go to other bars and check if they had empty seats, because that would’ve been impossible. If a bar has empty seats, it’s so freaking expensive you don’t want to go in and pay for a beer. That same money could buy you beers in the next bar enough to get you totally drunk. Of course, I didn’t have Reservie back then.
“So I went to the bar, bought a beer. Holding the glass, my precious prey close to my body, I tried to sneak through shoulders and arms. It felt like a real life Super Mario, if I got too close to an arm when it makes an abrupt movement I could say goodbye to my beer, I lose one of my three lives and I have to go back to the counter, a feat by itself.”
Emma looks up from her phone, “I don’t believe you played Super Mario, you’re too young for that.”
“Who cares about Mario, I’m telling you about Maria. Of course, I didn’t know her name then. She was sitting close to the bar and looked at me. She made a gesture to a seat next to her. The whole scene made no sense, she said something I couldn’t make out in the crowd. That seat was taken, a fat boy was sitting on it, I can still remember the dumb expression on his face. Her boyfriend, I figured. So why is she inviting me to their table with no empty seats. I nodded anyway and continued my struggle through the crowd, like Moses across the Red Sea, but I didn’t have a divine miracle on my side to separate the people. I had to elbow my way through, and don’t forget the beer I pressed to my chest. If beer has senses, it could certainly feel my heartbeat.
“When I got to the table, the fat fella stood up, he was probably about to leave anyway, and gave a goodbye kiss to the woman. Not a boyfriend’s kiss, or one from a good friend, just a plain kiss; and started his way to the door. I could see her face from one meter, he vanished from my consciousness. She had a little brown birthmark on her nose I still like, I know its shape. I could draw it anytime, give me a napkin, and I’ll show you. This is how I met my girlfriend three years ago, we’re planning to marry in October. If we can get a reservation.”
“Sometimes you can win a quid with a reservation,” aunt Emma smiles, “and sometimes you can win more without.”
