How common is it for restaurant customers to dine-and-dash?

I have heard some restaurants make the server pay for the meal. I hope that isn’t true. I have no idea how common it is to dine and dash.

Do you mean leave without paying? Restaurants build that into their pricing. The paying customers pay for it.

According to this forum not very common at all.

How do you know they didn’t pay by credit card before they dashed? Or maybe they handed cash to the server, who brought the change and you didn’t happen to see it?

I’m not sure how often it happens but I have done it before. I won’t lie, it was quite a rush. I have never done it since and probably never will again.

I worked at a restaurant for a little over a year in high school and this happened only once during that time. Thankfully it wasn’t one of my tables. And no, the server didn’t have to pay for it.

My daughter worked at Denny’s, and she said she had dine and dashers about once a night.

I’ve done this when going to play afterwards, dinner was a little later than I was expecting, we had to rush off straight afterwards.

I did it once.

We showed up for an all-you-can-eat wings night. Took us 20 minutes to get one pitcher of beer, and another 15 for a first order of wings – she brought out six, and they were burnt. There were four other people in the restaurant. She didn’t come back after 20 more minutes, so we finished the pitcher and left.

Sorry, but when I show up hungry and it takes an hour to get nothing, I’m not paying for it.

@YARNLADY that was what I assumed they did – I am shocked to find that some places make the server pay for it. I don’t believe that would be legal here.

@Seek_Kolinahr: If I go somewhere and the food is bad and the service is bad, I’ll get up and seek out the server, and if necessary, I’ll talk to the manager (i.e. “This food is burned and we don’t expect to be paying for it” and “We haven’t seen our waitress in fifteen minutes but we’d like another pitcher of beer”). Usually that gets the wait staff hopping and then, hopefully it’s not a surprise to her when her tip is reduced.

There was no employee of the place to be found. Not a manager, not a bartender, nothing. Five people at a table, they brought out six wings. Not six wings each, six wings. In an hour. I feel we waited more than long enough, and I have no remorse. I hope that awful business closes.

I did it once by accident in a pub, but when I found that no one had paid the tab, I returned the next day to take care of it.

@downtide Is it possible that the dashers left cash on the table, but were in a terrible hurry… off to catch a plane, or pick up a friend, for example? I think the server would have at least reacted with concern if they had not paid.

Apropos my response above, I would just like to clarify that we did pay for our meal, which had been absolutely delicious : ^)

@glacial I was close enough to the table to see that there was no cash. I guess it’s possible that it could have been very well hidden but because I was curious I was watching carefully and I did not see the waitress pick up any money. Its also possible that they may have made prior arrangements, but I can say for definite that they did not pay after they started to eat.