Mario Carbone’s flagship restaurant in Greenwich Village has around 75 seats, representing one of the most sought-after reservations in New York City. For diners hoping to score a slot, the process is almost an art form—a blend of opening Resy at the exact right second, or knowing someone who knows someone. But for Carbone, deciding how to fill each of those seats is not only a science, but his entire business. “If I leave it to chance,” he tells me, “I have absolutely no idea what my revenue is going to be, as opposed to a really tight, systematic way of keeping track of my customers.”
Speaking in his chef’s whites outside of the new London outpost of his famous franchise last week, Carbone admits that he’s not big into technology, describing himself as a “pen and paper kind of guy.” But with a rapidly expanding empire through Major Food Group, the hospitality company he started with fellow celebrity restaurateurs Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick, pen and paper aren’t enough to track their global crowd of customers and keep them coming back.
