Restaurants operate on razor-thin margins — especially in a city where commercial rents are astronomical, labor costs keep climbing, and the regulatory burden would make a CPA weep. When you book a table for four at a high-end spot and ghost, that's not just an empty table. That's prep work wasted, staff scheduled for nothing, and other paying customers who were turned away because the reservation system said there was no room.

This is how markets are supposed to work. A scarce resource (a dinner reservation at a popular restaurant) gets treated like it has value — because it does. No government mandate required. No new bureaucracy. Just a business protecting itself from people who can't be bothered to cancel a reservation.

As one Bay Area resident put it plainly: "If the restaurant is turning away other customers for you, then you have to pay up." Hard to argue with that logic.

The only real requirement here is transparency. If the policy is clearly communicated at the time of booking — and virtually all of these restaurants do disclose it — then you're entering a voluntary agreement. Don't like it? Don't book. It's that simple.

Interestingly, the conversation around cancellation fees has also reignited frustrations about the other fees SF restaurants love to tack on — the mysterious "employee wellness" surcharges and service fees that show up on your bill like uninvited guests. One local noted that cancellation fees are actually "more reasonable than service fees on top of expected 20%+ tips." And another resident quipped that California's state parks system could learn a thing or two from restaurants about holding reservations accountable.

They're not wrong. There's a meaningful difference between a fee that enforces a commitment you voluntarily made and a hidden surcharge designed to make menu prices look lower than they actually are. One is accountability. The other is theater.

So yes, $75 per head stings. But you know what's a foolproof way to avoid it? Show up — or cancel in time. Personal responsibility: still free.