Welcome back to Eater Today, where we’re discussing the booming gig economy of line sitters who will do the dirty work (waiting) for you to get that coveted Lucali calzone or dot cakes. |
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The booming restaurant line-sitter economy |
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As with the DMV and laundry day, waiting in line for a restaurant, product, or show has always been one of those humbling experiences that every person must go through, unless you’re Cate Blanchett, in which case you will immediately get into Berghain to dance and eat ice cream.
Then came the professional line-sitters: They popped up seemingly out of nowhere, spicing up the gig economy by offering to wait in line at hot spots like Lucali and Via Carota in NYC, and offering their services on TaskRabbit in major cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles; as one LA line sitter named Korem A. with dozens of “waits” under her belt explains in her TaskRabbit bio, “I’ll wait for you like I would for myself,” she writes, “with care and responsibility” for product drops, restaurants and food pop-ups, and even prescriptions.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock |
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NYC-based Robert Samuel saw such a demand for line waiting that he started his own line-waiting business nearly 15 years ago, Same Ole Line Dudes, and now line waits full-time. He has roughly 35 line waiters taking on requests around the city, he says, “and sometimes even beyond, for anything that requires a wait.” In his business’s early years, he says Cronuts were the big-ticket item. “We had a client who wanted to impress these business people visiting from Japan. They wanted to close a deal with something they’d never seen before, and I guess that was Cronuts. They sent six of our [line sitters] to get a dozen, because you can only buy so many per person at a time.”
Today’s hot item in NYC? Dot cakes. According to Samuel, “We had a customer who wanted two [dot cakes] of every flavor. So she hired five line sitters.” At $11 per dot cake and $50 (minimum) per line sitter (they charge $25 per hour with a two-hour minimum), that’s a significant markup. Top restaurant requests for Same Ole Line Dudes include Italian and pizza places like Via Carota, Lucali, and Emilio’s Ballato, but Samuel says that not every restaurant is welcoming of his line sitters. “I don’t want to name any names,” he tells Eater, “but there is a very in-demand steakhouse in the West Village that has been giving us pushback.”
Read the full story here. |
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