The bill, dubbed the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act, says that third-party reservation services such as Resy and OpenTable cannot “advertise, promote, or sell reservations” on its platforms for a “food service establishment” without a written agreement with the establishments.
Making black market reservations in New York had become a side business, with practitioners snapping up blocks of meal times at the hottest restaurants with the intention of selling them back to people who want to dine there, NBC News reported. A student at Brown University made $100,000 over the course of 19 months from selling reservations, according to NBC News.