How NOT to Get a Reservation at Mawn

Mawn’s 32-seat dining room / Photograph by Michael Persico, originally published in A Noodle House With No Rules Is Exactly What Philly Needs Right Now

The drama started on New Year’s Day, inside the cloistered walls of the private Facebook group PHILAQUEENS. Reservations for Mawn, one of the most in-demand restaurants in the city, went live at noon, and from what I understand, every single reservation was snapped up and gone by 12:02 p.m.

One user had gotten lucky (maybe) or gamed the system (maybe), and had come away with some seats. And on the PHILAQUEENS “Buy, Sell & Trade” page, they were trying to sell them to the highest bidder. That’s bad. But trust me, it gets worse.

They didn’t just have one reservation. They had multiple on the books — 11 to be exact. For January and February seatings. And all of them were for sale to the tune of $75 a pop, according to a source in the Facebook group.

In case you don’t know, a seat at Mawn is probably the most coveted thing in this city right now. Alongside scoring a spot at Jesse Ito’s omakase counter at Royal Sushi & Izakaya, it is one of the hardest seats to get. And having seen and experienced the Mawn reservations system first-hand, I’m not even sure how anyone could score 11, outside of sorcery, or being granted 11 wishes by some kind of Italian Market dumpster genie.

The post quickly lit up on social media, ending up on Reddit, and several people reached out directly to the restaurant to let them know what was going on. So when owners Phila and Rachel Lorn heard about this reservation scalping, they knew they  had to do something.

“I know it happens,” Rachel told me when I talked to her yesterday. “But we don’t monitor it so we only know if someone tells us.”

And this time, lots of people did.

Rachel again: “This is the first time we were made aware by several people sending us the Facebook thread. We felt like we had to make it known [that this is] not okay, and disrespectful to us and the community.”

Rachel Lorn reviewing Mawn’s dinner reservations / Photograph by Chloé Pantazi-Wolber

I talked to Rachel because she’s in charge of the book. She runs Mawn’s front-of-house, keeps the lists at lunch every day of those who make it in for a meal and those who get turned away, and keeps track of the reservations at dinner. She knows how hard it is to get a table at her restaurant. She knows how long some people have to wait. And it infuriates her when people try to game the system for their own benefit.

“We were sent several messages yesterday by different people — strangers — with screenshots showing us that this was happening,” she said. “We felt like we had a responsibility to respond. It was really important to us that everyone sees we are not wit’ that.”

So they went into the reservation system, found the person who was doing the selling, and immediately cancelled all 11 reservations.

And then Mawn let everyone know that they weren’t about to let someone play them like that. They posted the original sale offer online, along with their response, in the hope that a little public shaming might put the lid on this kind of nonsense.

“We are inundated daily with people who are mad about not being able to get reservations,” Rachel told me. “The truth is, the size [of the restaurant] and demand [for reservations] do not match, but then if, on top of that, some people have somehow figured out how to get multiple reservations from our already small inventory, and then they are trying to sell them …”

That’s shitty is the end of that sentence. My words, not Rachel’s. But still true. You do something like that, that’s shitty. That’s cheating to take reservations away from people who are trying to play fair, and doing it for your own financial benefit.

Phila Lorn glancing at the guest list / Photograph by Stevie Chris, originally published in Phila and Rachel Lorn’s Trick to Success? Desperation

The reservation landscape in Philly right now is already pretty grim. Getting a prime-time seat almost anywhere now seems to involve a level of scheming and guile that makes Ticketmaster seem like an ethical, well-run system. And none of that is likely going to get better any time soon.

Yes, city council recently passed a ban on “reservation scalping” that would make the practice illegal, but the problem is really more an economic and psychological one.

With Philly’s newfound hotness as a restaurant city and news of big openings from scores of serious operators (both local and not so) dominating the dining discourse, no one wants to feel like they’re being left out of the fun. No one wants to be the last person to see what everyone is talking about. Like TV series, restaurants have now become something that we all feel like we have to binge just so that we can have an opinion on what’s happening and what’s coming next. And in that kind of environment, reservations become a kind of currency — their value increasing with every additional diner who’s willing to do almost anything for a seat.

And Mawn? It’s just ground-zero for this kind of thing right now.

It’s a small, 32-seat neighborhood joint, open just four days a week, with only a handful of dedicated staff. Every seat in the place is full, every seating of every day.

And the team does their best to make the experience special for everyone who comes through their doors. They want every night to feel like a dinner party — small, intimate, a little bit too loud and full of friends and neighbors. They are all about the block, the community, and Philly, as eloquently described by Phila in his James Beard acceptance speech from a few months back. And, honestly, a meal there is one of those that can stick in your memory for decades and make you rethink what you love about restaurants in the first place. So it’s no wonder a month’s worth of reservations get booked within two minutes.

“We can’t control bots,” Rachel explained, “or people that are more tech savvy. But for anyone abusing it, there is consequence.”

Like getting all those reservations cancelled. Publicly. And having everyone in the city who has ever been turned away at the door pissed at you for trying to game the system for your benefit, at the cost of fans and neighbors who are trying to act right.

“I think people need to be reminded that we are a small family business,” Rachel said. “We are not part of a big company. This kind of exploitation is just disrespectful to us and the community.”