Businessinsider.com - Making restaurant reservations is a way of life -- but, for many consumers, so is breaking them. For every reservation that is made in some large cities, around 20% result in an empty table that the business must hope to fill with walk-in consumers. In an industry that, according to a Wall Street Journal article, often has margins as low as 3% to 5%, those are odds that some restaurants can't afford to bet on.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/economics-of-restaurant-reservations-2013-6#ixzz2WTPLTLaN