Why minimum spends scare people.
Jan 15, 2026
Minimum spends tend to stop people in their tracks.
I’ll often see someone excited about an event. They’ve picked a date, have a rough headcount, and can picture the night. Then the minimum spend comes up and everything slows down.
Most restaurants aren’t trying to take advantage of anyone. They’re just protecting themselves. When a space is committed to a group, that’s space taken away from normal service. If the group shows up much smaller or spends far less than expected, the restaurant loses business it likely would have done anyway.
That’s what a minimum spend is really covering.
The problem is that this isn’t always explained clearly. Without context, the number feels like a risk. People spend hours trying to decode what it actually means, second guessing whether they’re overcommitting, or walking away altogether.
That’s the part I care about most.
A big part of why I built Curated By was to remove that confusion. To explain what a minimum spend represents, how it connects to the experience, and why it matters to both sides. Not to push people into spending more, but to make sure they’re not wasting time or making decisions without understanding the tradeoffs.
When expectations are clear, minimum spends usually stop feeling scary. They start feeling like structure.
And when everyone understands the structure, the night tends to work better for everyone involved.