Restaurant devastated after cruel pranksters book out every Sunday table

22 November 2022, 12:00

Rafters at Riverside House in Derbyshire was tricked out of £5,500 [STOCK IMAGE]. Picture: Getty Images/Google Maps

Rafters at Riverside House in Derbyshire had its entire Sunday Service booked up as a cruel prank.

Loading audio...

A restaurant was left devastated after someone booked out their entire weekend service as a ‘malicious’ joke.

Rafters At Riverside House in Ashford-in-the-Water, near Bakewell, is usually fully booked on Sundays, with the owners often having to turn away customers.

However, after a no-show back in February, bosses decided to ring around the upcoming customers to double check they were coming the following day and ask about dietary requirements.

Listen on Global Player: At Your Leisure with Sue Perkins

They started to suspect something was wrong after many of the numbers they had been given were wrong.

Rafters At Riverside House. Picture: Google Maps

Trying out the emails as well, the messages started bouncing back and they were unable to get hold of anyone.

Turning into a detective, the owner Alistair Myers told Manchester Evening News that his team looked at the IP addresses used, and one person made all the bookings.

Over a two hour period, the mystery person made 23 false bookings, amounting to 109 covers in total.

If each customer spent on average £40, this means the restaurant would have lost out on over £4,000.

A restaurant could have lost out of over £4,000 [STOCK IMAGE]. Picture: Getty Images

Alistair - who also runs the Rafters restaurant in Sheffield - has now decided to bring in a deposit system and could soon hand the evidence to the police to investigate.

“It’s quite malicious really,” he told Manchester Evening News.

“It’s either a prank, or someone being horrible to us. We’d have bought all the food in, and we serve quite expensive beef. It would have been a disaster.

Luckily, the restaurant managed to fill their restaurant by reaching out to locals.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rafters at Riverside House (@raftersrh)

Taking to Instagram at the time, they thanked their loyal customers for their support, writing: “We just want to say a massive THANK YOU!! 🥰

“Since having our upcoming weekend looking like a train wreck at the start of this week with all of your support we’ve managed to fill up a huge amount of tables for this Sunday lunch! 🍽

“We cannot thank everyone enough for the support that has been shown over the last few days and look forward to seeing each and every one of you this weekend ❤️.”