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Tinder’s Popularity Influencing the Design of Restaurants?

The restaurant where I used to wait tables had only four “deuces” or “two-tops,” and that was a lousy section to work. Two people don’t spend as much as four or eight, but take nearly the same amount of time to wait on, and your tip is the same percentage of a vastly smaller bill. You wanted to work the back room with the big tables, and restaurants didn’t have much incentive to install a lot of deuces.

Now, however, Washington Post reporter Lavanya Ramanathan has pointed out something interesting: The rise of dating app Tinder has given restaurateurs a motivation to install more deuces rather than less.

The reasons for this are many. Tinderites are total strangers getting to know each other, and are probably not going to commit to a meal. Nor are they going to get rip-roaring drunk together, running up a pricey tab. And assuming they go through lots of these dates each week and are on a budget, they’re also not going to order top-shelf booze.

The result is that you have two people taking up a table and spending very little. What’s even worse is when the restaurant is filled with Tinder dates, spilling over into booths and larger tables; because now you’ve got two cheapskates occupying a table for four, while a newly-entered party of four has to wait for the table to free up.

At least one restaurateur has noticed and made design changes, and others are sure to follow suit.

Ashok Bajaj, owner of several Washington restaurants including Rasika, Ardeo + Bardeo, and Nopa Kitchen + Bar, recalls noti­cing the phenomenon a few years ago. “At Bardeo, we had 10 tables, and a lot of those tables were for four. Every single table, almost every single night, was filled with couples,” he says.

When it was time to refresh the space, Bajaj did away with booths and installed tables for two, increasing the number of couples he could seat in that same space every night (which equals more money for the house).

He applied the lesson at Nopa, in Penn Quarter, creating a series of two-seat nooks in the extensive bar area so that couples don’t have to plant themselves at a dining room table for hours on end.

What they should install next: Levers at each seat that control a trapdoor under the opposite seat.