In fairness, they could probably require chicken sacrifice and still be sold out; Grant Achatz is among the most celebrated chefs in the country.
Also, I think the Next/Alinea ticketing system is addressing a related but different problem. Next and Alinea are restaurants that casual diners can't get into at any price. It's hard to plan around a table at Next except to call, ask for the next available table a few weeks out, and rework your whole schedule around it. If you're traveling to Chicago, even with a few weeks notice, it's a crap shoot.
What the Next ticketing system does is give tables some predictability and transparency. Instead of calling the restaurant and squeamishly asking for a table on a date that you probably won't get, you hit a website and get a choice of dates.
Most restaurants don't have that problem; with a few days notice, you can get a table almost anywhere else in Chicago (except schwa, but no reservation system is going to help those guys).
Oh, I certainly agree with much of what you say about this restaurant being a bit of an exception. And, I recall an article that discussed their thinking on the ticketing. Their main reason was that even at the high prices that their first restaurant Alinea charged, margins were actually fairly small and last minute cancellations cut significantly into those margins.
But, it's still worth pointing out that they are still using variable pricing and are one of the first to really do so. From everything I've read, there's no reason to think that they wouldn't charge the same high rate every night if they didn't think they could get it, so even they seem to have found value in offering different pricing for days with different levels of demand.
Also, I think the Next/Alinea ticketing system is addressing a related but different problem. Next and Alinea are restaurants that casual diners can't get into at any price. It's hard to plan around a table at Next except to call, ask for the next available table a few weeks out, and rework your whole schedule around it. If you're traveling to Chicago, even with a few weeks notice, it's a crap shoot.
What the Next ticketing system does is give tables some predictability and transparency. Instead of calling the restaurant and squeamishly asking for a table on a date that you probably won't get, you hit a website and get a choice of dates.
Most restaurants don't have that problem; with a few days notice, you can get a table almost anywhere else in Chicago (except schwa, but no reservation system is going to help those guys).