Philly looks to crack down on restaurant ‘reservation scalpers’ ahead of Michelin ratings | City Council roundup

It’s hard enough, as is, to get a reservation at some of Philadelphia’s hottest restaurants, especially the teeny-tiny spots with only a handful of tables available each night. With the prestigious Michelin Guide set to rate restaurants in the city for the first time next month, snagging a seat could become even more difficult.

But Philadelphia lawmakers want to eliminate one barrier.

City Council is set to consider legislation to ban so-called reservation scalpers, third-party businesses that allow people to snatch up coveted tables and then resell them, at times for exorbitant prices. The bill says the apps can grab reservations from restaurants in the city only with the restaurant’s explicit consent.

City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a Democrat who represents the city at-large and is one of the authors of the bill, said restaurants can be saddled with empty tables if the reservations don’t resell, so the idea is to crack down on this “predatory behavior” ahead of the Michelin ratings.

Here’s more on that effort, and a rundown of what else happened in Council this week.

Kneecapping ‘restaurant scalpers’: The legislation, modeled after a similar law in New York, is not aimed at popular apps and websites like OpenTable, Resy, and Tock that already partner directly with restaurants.

It instead targets those that don’t. Primarily, that includes a site called AppointmentTrader.com, which provides a platform for people to sell coveted reservations and tickets to sold-out events. Sometimes reservations are snatched up by people who spend hours a day scrolling for tables.

Ben Fileccia, the director of operations and strategy at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, said some reservation purchasers buy multiple tables for the same time. That means some restaurant operators and servers end up with empty chairs.

He said in-demand reservations are a “valuable commodity” and restaurants should decide whether or not they want to partner with the organizations booking them.

“This is a great, proactive piece of legislation to help support these restaurants,” Fileccia said, “especially as they really enter the world stage in the coming years.”

But Jonas Frey, the founder of AppointmentTrader.com, said the legislation would needlessly target his platform and said efforts to ban reservation sales are “communistic.”

Frey said his company put safeguards in place two years ago to crack down on reservation scalping. For example, new account holders cannot upload more than 10 reservations, and accounts can be shut down if more than half of their reservations go unsold.

Most users, Frey said, are selling a restaurant reservation because they can’t make it and are looking to cover a potential no-show fee.

“I understand if you were scalping reservations, that creates artificial scarcity, and these restaurants would be empty all the time,” he said. “But we don’t do that.”

Building a better bike lane?: After a tragic sequence of fatal bike and pedestrian accidents in 2024, city officials have been trying to make tweaks to some roadways to create safer conditions.

Chief among those changes was a law making it illegal to idle automobiles in bike lanes, and a bid by the Philadelphia Department of Streets to add loading zones to Spruce and Pine Streets to give residents somewhere to drop off their passengers and unload groceries without endangering cyclists.

But some residents on these streets sued to protect the handful of parking spaces that would be lost to the new loading zones and, this summer, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street ordered city officials to halt their plan because they acted without a City Council ordinance.

Usually changes to streets policies — like creating new loading zones — require legislation from City Council. But in the 1980s, Council gave up that power to the streets department in Center City and University City.

However, that arrangement was never codified, and Thomas Street’s ruling uncovered the vulnerability of thousands of regulations that the department has issued over the last 40 years.

At the beginning of the fall Council session, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration tried to correct this regulatory oversight. But at a contentious Streets Committee hearing, Council President Kenyatta Johnson amended the bill to once again apply only to Spruce and Pine Streets, arguing that the legislature should not have given up its power over all of Center City back in the 1980s.

The administration has been trying to convince Council that the bill will be a hedge against potential future lawsuits challenging hundreds of long-existing loading zones and other street regulations all over Center City.

And it seems two of the three Center City Council members have been persuaded. At Thursday’s session, Johnson amended the bill again to include his district and Councilmember Mark Squilla’s district.

But Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young, often a quarrelsome contrarian, had his district exempted from the administration bill so that he will have power over adding new loading zones and other streets regulations.

The now twice-amended ordinance could be passed by Council next week, and a sequel bill for University City, in Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s district, is planned for later this year.

An examination of school facilities: Thomas also introduced a resolution calling for hearings on the Philadelphia School District’s facilities.

The call was something of a surprise — the district is in the midst of a major facilities planning process that will result in school closings, consolidations, new buildings, and colocations.

But Thomas, who chairs Council’s Education Committee and is the son of a former Philadelphia schoolteacher, has long been interested in the state of the district’s buildings and, at times, frustrated by the district’s stewardship of them. School officials recently released data that will help inform closure decisions, held hearings on possible closings and other changes this summer, and promised more this fall — but have made no announcements about when those additional hearings might happen. A district web page says hearings are “coming soon.”

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has signaled he expects to present his facilities recommendations, including closings, in November, and the school board has said it will vote on the changes by the end of the calendar year.

Max Weisman, a spokesperson for Thomas, said the hearings are proposed not to be in opposition to, or instead of, district hearings, but because “not all of the district’s meetings have been as well-attended as we would like.”

A hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Sisterly love: That was comedian Wanda Sykes, a top proponent of the effort to bring a WNBA team to Philadelphia. She appeared in Council on Thursday alongside a bevy of women’s sports benefactors, who were honored for their work elevating the role of women’s sports in Philly.

Staff writer Ariel Simpson contributed to this article.