Cherry-picking restaurant reservation customers

This study first identifies the mismatch between size and value when a restaurant that receives booking requests from customer parties elects to cherry-pick among the intending parties, and second proposes that SPM (average spending per person per minute) is a better indicator for evaluating any intending party's real value. The results obtained through discrete-event simulation techniques confirm that the proposed SPM policy outperforms policies based on party size and traditional first-come-first-served practices and the alternative recommendation is that focus should rest on more profitable strategies that improves SPM value rather than simply on going for size, that is, looking only for larger or smaller parties.