State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, speaks on the Senate floor before the end of this year’s legislative session.

Ticket scalping has come to the restaurant business – though perhaps not for long.

Among the hundreds of bills passed in the closing days of the state legislative session is S.9365/A.10215. Sponsored by Assemblyman Alex Bores, D-New York City, and Sen. Nathalia Fernandez, D-Bronx, the legislation will prohibit third-party restaurant reservation services like Open Table, Tock and Seated from arranging unauthorized restaurant reservations.

The bill was unanimously approved in the state Senate and passed the state Assembly 144-1, with both Assemblymen Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, and Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, voting in favor. Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, also voted in favor of the legislation and was the only senator to speak about it on the Senate floor.

“As a restaurant owner I can tell you this is an interesting situation,” Borrello said. “We now have scalping when it comes to restaurant reservations. That’s what this amounts to. Essentially these companies book up reservations at, typically, restaurants that are difficult to get a reservation and then they sell them online as Senator Fernandez described, you know, basically scalping that reservation.”

The Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act will prohibit third-party restaurant reservation services from listing, advertising, promoting, or selling reservations for a food service establishment unless they obtain prior permission from a restaurant. It is modeled after a 2021 state and New York City law governing food delivery services.

Fernandez and Bores wrote in their legislative justification that some of the third party platforms are charging large fees for the reservations though there is no actual business relationship between the app and the restaurant. In New York City reservations have been double booked with no way to recoup the reservation fee paid to the third party app.

“With the implementation of AI we’re seeing even going even further,” Borrello said. “At my restaurant we received phone calls from an AI robot making a reservation on behalf of someone who never called for it. It’s really quite amazing, so I think I want to thank the sponsor for this bill so we can preserve the integrity of the restaurant industry here in New York state.”