A small steakhouse is the latest Bristol restaurant to speak out about no shows after a 'heartbreaking' night.
Steak Me Out launched in the building formerly home to the Siam Angel café in St George's Road in August off the back of a successful steak delivery service of the same name.
It has got off to a promising start with a rating of 4.7 out of 5 on Google from 12 reviews, with people praising the quality of food and reasonable prices.
But restaurant owner Rob Gilkes is now considering bringing in a deposit system after 16 customers - equating to around 70 per cent of total bookings - failed to show up without cancelling last Friday (October 23).
The 26-year-old shared his frustration on the restaurant's Facebook page.
"I’ve posted before about late cancellations and no shows, however I just wanted to put one final post out there before we’re forced to start taking deposits for bookings," begins the post.
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"Using last Friday as an example, we had 16 customers not turn up. This was around 70% of our total bookings for the evening.
"No call, no email, no message, just simply didn’t turn up. We turned numerous bookings away during the day believing we were full, and quite honestly, to have that number of no-shows was heart breaking."
Rob added that although he understands "times are tough at the moment", it "really doesn’t take much just to let us know you’re not going to come so we can give your table to another customer".
The post goes on to say: "We’re a small, independent, newly established restaurant and work on extremely tight margins to enable us to offer excellent quality steaks and hugely affordable prices, however, when we lose over 70% of our income on one of our busiest nights due to customers not turning up, something has to change."
"We’ve always prided ourselves on being different from the rest and having a strong community focus, all we ask for is a little courtesy in return."
Other restaurants to hit out at no shows in recent weeks include the Cloak & Dagger, whose head chef said they are 'signing our death certificate' and North Street wine bar Kask.
On October 27 Steak Me Out hosted a 'pay what you can' dining experience where customers were asked to pay what what they could afford at the end of their meal.
