Can’t Get Into a Restaurant? Blame the Reservation Apps.

Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, August 11th. I'm Belle Lin, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. For many people, once you go electric, you stay electric, but that may not be the case anymore. We are looking at the reasons why EV drivers aren't staying loyal to their battery-powered cars and the options they're now looking at instead. Then, if you've had trouble getting a reservation at a restaurant recently, you're not alone. What used to be just a New York or Los Angeles problem is now happening in cities across the country, and apps may be to blame. We dig into how tech is changing the way we eat out, and why restaurants and diners are hungry for a different system. But first, for Americans looking to lease a car, vehicle honeymoon is over. A February study from J.D. Power showed that 96% of polled EV owners say they would consider purchasing or leasing another, but only if there are options. And nationally, second quarter new EV sales and leases were down 20.5% year-over-year, according to Kelley Blue Book. WSJ's Ellie Davis spoke with several drivers who thought going electric would be a permanent switch, but are now finding themselves back in the car. At the gas pumps once again. She spoke with our colleague Imani Moise to explain why. Why is leasing an EV getting more expensive? The EV tax credit is no longer around. This was a Biden-era policy measure, and people who were buying a new EV could put $7,500 towards that purchase. They could also put that tax credit towards leasing a car, and people could get these lease deals for, in some cases, around $100. Especially when dealers were anticipating the EV tax credit's expiration, and they wanted to get those cars off their lots as fast as possible while the deal was still around. Just how dramatically have lease payments changed over the past couple years? On average, we've seen an increase in lease prices. Average monthly lease payments for EVs hit a low in July 2025 at $538 per month. In June, that same price had risen, to $707 per month. And compared to the average monthly payment for a gas car, it's about $100 more. Is it really just the prices that are scaring people away? All else being equal, if the prices were the same, would the drivers that you spoke to want to get another EV? The drivers that I spoke to really got hooked on EVs when they took the plunge and tried them out for the first time when they had the justification that prices were really low. The drivers that I spoke to were excited about getting another EV, and in some cases, they were shopping around in the market, really hoping to find another EV so that they could keep using the chargers that they had put into their homes when they got their first EV. But some found they were not seeing options that they were interested in because the options for EVs now are really few. There's not a lot of smaller EV options on the market within an affordable price range. So it's pushed some consumers out of the market. And I think that's a really good thing. Will prices become more affordable again, or were those deals too good to be true? The analysts that I spoke to in the industry really think that those prices were once in a lifetime. The consumers who acted when they did and they got an EV either through buying the car or getting a really good lease deal did the right thing. They got a great deal, but they're probably never going to see that type of deal again. So when people decide not to lease another EV, what are they going with? We're seeing that people who are trading in an EV, whether that is a car that they've owned or leased, they're more and more switching to getting a hybrid as their replacement car. Back in quarter two of 2022, people who were turning in an EV, 3.4% of them chose to get a hybrid. Whereas in quarter two of 2026, 12.7% opted for a hybrid. And those are trade-ins excluding Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, which are companies that only sell EVs. And this data is according to Edmunds. Do we know why people are turning more to hybrids? The people I spoke to said that the prices for hybrids are more appealing and there's still people who are environmentally conscious and they don't want to be paying a ton of money for gas. And they figured that owning a hybrid was better than going back to a fully gas car. So what do you think this trend means for the wider EV industry? For the wider EV industry, there's going to be a lot of work to try, and rebuild the number of sales that we've been seeing in EVs historically. A lot of consumers might be willing to get another EV, but consumers aren't going to be willing to spend a lot more on a second EV than they paid for their first EV. So they're going to have to be bought in terms of prices and the technology. That was the WSJ's Ellie Davis speaking with our colleague Imani Moise. Have you considered switching from an EV to a hybrid? If you're a listener on Spotify, leave us a comment explaining why. Coming up, logging onto reservation apps at midnight is becoming a common scenario for diners looking to secure coveted tables across the country. We'll explain what's happening behind the scenes after the break. We'll talk about some of the things that Imani Moise has been working on for many years. So stay tuned for the next episode of Reservations to Check. Heather, can you take us on a safari of sorts through the world of reservation technology? What types of companies are we talking about here? How long do you have? There are so many companies now. So probably everyone is familiar with some of the basic ones like OpenTable. OpenTable was actually really one of the first OGs of these apps. And so they really paved the way for this whole standard that we're now used to, which is going online, looking up a restaurant, seeing who handles the food. Handles the reservations and booking there. The other ones that people might be familiar with are Resi, which tends to carry a higher end, you know, buzzy, kind of a more exclusive, maybe Michelin star restaurants. There's Seven Rooms, which is another one of these kind of more niche restaurant apps that DoorDash, the delivery service, actually bought last year. But then if you really want to get one of those hot tables, you probably can't use any of those because you have to get even a more premium, premium software that can find these reservations and troll the internet for them. So it's really become a crazy world for that table of two. Another thing that's changed is the involvement of credit card companies. What are they bringing to the table? Pun intended. They are bringing money. They are bringing money and customers. Amex really shifted this whole environment in 2019 when they bought Resi. And what they started doing was to be able to exclusive tables for their most elite credit card holders at these restaurants. So this was a credit card perk. How they did that was in addition to just saying to restaurants, hey, do you want some of these exclusive high earning customers? Maybe we'll provide an incentive for you to do that. And so some of this involved restaurants getting money to hold back certain tables for these customers within a certain period. So say 48 hours before, the actual date of the dinner. And then for customers, you know, it provides those exclusive tables. But some of these credit cards also provide a credit or kind of a benefit at the end of the year after booking. So these Resi credits became something that people really liked to have. It's an additional perk. How are these apps changing the dining experience for restaurants? They are increasingly having to juggle reservations coming from so many different platforms. And so increasingly to run a restaurant on this kind of level, you need to have someone who's handling all this technology for you. One of the restaurant owners that you spoke to compared it to polyamory. Can you tell us what he meant by that? Well, yeah, I mean, you're playing with a lot of different services. And I think a lot of these restaurants are too fearful to go exclusive with one of these services because they don't want to alienate other customers that they might be getting from one of these other services. So you're really juggling a lot of different relationships here. Given that restaurants already face low margins, why are they so willing to pay things like platform fees or commissions to these third party services? Because restaurants know this is where people are going to book reservations and they need butts in seats. And I talked to one restaurant who just said, you just have to have that volume to be able to make the economics work. And so if it means paying a monthly fee, you're going to do that. Has social media exacerbated the trend towards more tech in dining? I think it's exacerbated the trend towards wanting to be at that exclusive restaurant where everyone else else's. So there's a lot more focus on posting where you are, that hot it location. And then that has fueled this frenzy of other people wanting to be there too. And so if there's apps that are going to enable you to be able to do that, then that does play into this whole trend. Are there any negative consequences of the social media trend for restaurants? Yeah. So I think one of the things in talking to customers in restaurants, you know, where has gone the loyal diner in this whole situation. So if you can post and brag about where you've been, that elite restaurant, then maybe you don't need to go back there again, as opposed to, you know, a loyal, especially like business customer that might want to go back to a restaurant over and over again. If there's not a table for that business customer, then that restaurant really is losing out on that long-term relationship to hold that table for someone who maybe just wants to boast about where they've gone for one special occasion dinner. Where do you think the industry is going next? Everyone sees this as kind of an arms race that might eventually end. The question is, are these credit card companies going to continue to offer these kind of perks and provide restaurants lucrative amounts of money to guarantee access for some of these customers? With DoorDash coming in just last year, it's continuing for sure, but there had been some signs that it was going to ebb prior to that. So yeah, I think this frenzy will probably continue, for the short term. And I think anyone who really just does not want to participate in it should just go to their local restaurant. That was WSJ reporter Heather Haddon speaking with our colleague Imani Moise. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Logging off, I'm Belle Lin, a reporter for. The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. Thanks for listening.