Welcome back cat dad love the name!
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I would love Hayato, like many organizations or fan groups, it is the obnoxious fan-base who ruins it for others, not the actual organization.
Wait, so the issue is Pork Belly’s posts?!
Ignoring how cool it is to have documentation of the menu changing over the seasons and years- those posts predate the vast majority of media coverage and the Michelin guide’s return to Los Angeles. You can see not only how special Hayato was right at the beginning, but there has been advice the entire time on best practices to get a seat for dinner there. How does that ruin a restaurant lol?!
Complaining about “snobs” on a food forum is for sure a bit wild in general. Am I a snob for driving hours out of the way to buy banchan, standing in line for strawberries at the farmers market or spending 14 hours boiling bones for stock? My Mom sure thinks so!
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User is just mad that Hayato is difficult to reserve. I tried getting reservations since like Dec and I failed every month. Do I complain every time porkbelly takes photos? Nope.
When they do go there, I’ll be here waiting for the day they change their tune. 
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@PorkyBelly is obnoxious, but yes blame the beloved regular or the restaurant/chef who’d rather reward loyalty and a sure thing over a potential one-time diner who just wants to check off his/her Michelin star list (didn’t we have this discussion elsewhere?).
Per HBR: “Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%.”
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@chrishei looking forward to holding hands with you under the counter at hayato this month 
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I don’t think either of those is an expense for a restaurant that’s as hard to get into as Hayato, charges a deposit, and has an eager waiting list.
Yeah but snobs like @PorkyBelly writes about his elitist and privileged meals here to promote and refers other potential high-value customers.
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I blame @PorkyBelly thinking it was Pork Belly for 7 years before realizing it is Porky Belly.
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Hayato did not get to that state overnight, and won’t stay that way without sustained effort. There are many things that restaurants do directly and indirectly to attract the audience they want. E.g. Brandon does some forms of PR by having a website, having a social media account even if he doesn’t post much, going to events like Michelin unveils or James Beard, films video/news segments with media folks, etc. These all cost time and effort even if there’s not a direct monetary cost. Then there’s even more intangibles like buying Toto toilets so people from FTC will be willing to go.
A direct example of this, is for years and years I wasn’t sure if I’d appreciate the experience of Hayato enough to justify the cost and hassle of getting a reservation. But PorkyBelly’s extensive documentation convinced me to take a chance and Brandon technically paid him zero dollars for that publicity. However PorkyBelly being a regular diner facilitates that and the staff still has to spend time making that happen.
You could argue that maybe he does too much of this if he’s got such a long waiting list. Or you could also look at the difficulty of getting in as another part of the marketing strategy (even if it’s not intended that way).
So the cost of acquiring a customer is not zero, even for a restaurant like Hayato. And generally keeping a repeat customer is more efficient than finding a new one, even if that HBR value doesn’t directly translate.
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Repeat customers are more likely to pay for drinks.
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Why would restaurants not cater to their regulars? Always been how it is done in Japan. Maybe you should get out more?
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re: the nyer article on reservations, this is what shows up on appointmenttrader
don’t think that’s real. If you click the links you can’t actually buy the res. It says “bid now for a concierge to fill the res”
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