What makes a good restaurant? Good food? A good atmosphere? A hot waitresses that slips you her phone number in the bill?

Think about some of the restaurants that you like, what do they have in common? They are probably in a convenient location, clean, have good food, a nice ambiance, and a waitress/hostess with an average sized rack that uses her tight ass to guide you to your table.

What else? The answer is people. Of all the places that I can think of being great restaurants, nearly all of them have always had a steady number of customers. Why is this? Well, because of the reasons stated above.

Why is that restaurant good? Because it has a lot of people in it on a regular day. If it had shit food, people wouldn't come back which would decrease the number of people in it on a regular day. If the ambiance was shitty, same thing. Good things add customers. Bad things reduce the number of customers.

What is a good indicator that a restaurant is good? It's packed.

What about that other place across the street? It seats 50 and yet only 6 people are dining.

People are smart enough to assess the cues from different restaurants to make a judgement call. It's the elephant in the room that's acknowledged whether or not the elephant's existence is validated or not.

Going to the packed place is a much safer bet than the place across the street that has enough empty space to fit 4 football teams.

"Is the food not good there?"

"It's probably not clean, that's why there is no one there."

"I bet you the food is old because they don't have many customers."

These are just the things that someone can think of. There are other things that will affect you regardless of if you think about them.

Things to do with the experience a restaurant provides. Think about the excitement generated by going to a restaurant that you know has a high chance of having good food, customer service, a very nice ambiance, and many people to share the experience with around you. Think of how a girl feels about it. She can relax, she knows what you expect, and her experience will come within 10% margin or error of what she'd expect. She would expect a great night at a nice restaurant. And she would hate having a shitty night, but hey, she can relax, because she's not going to get a shitty night because she's going to this place, where it will be good.

Let's just assume that on the same night, another girl is going to the place across the street where they will play the same music and serve the same food. Think about the excitement generated by going to that restaurant. She would know that the last time she saw the place, roughly 90% of the seats were empty. What are her expectations? The expectations are lower, even if the future would hold the exact same experience, because she can only go by what she has seen so far. She will also not be completely relaxed about the night as the girl going to the other restaurant.

So she takes a chance and walks in to the place and 12/50 seats are taken; that's going to affect her thinking. "Why are there only 12 people here?". But if the place is packed, all of that instantly goes out the window, and the girl can relax. "I'm not the only one that likes this place, look at all these other people that like it as well, I feel safe because of that" - will be her thinking.

As you can see, the simple fact that other people like the place is a quality of the place itself and it actually provides a benefit to the girl in the example.

You can switch out restaurants for men in the examples above and it should become readily apparent if it wasn't glaringly clear before in terms of how important pre-selection is.