Actually yes you can flake on them first, but there's pros and cons:

Before you meet for the first time you have little relative status. She doesn't know you, and assumes you are probably like all the rest, although she hopes to meet that special Chad.

If you're rude or piss her off, she'll just think "fuck you".

Being busy and having other priorities is good.

So the trick is to cancel on her, but early enough not to annoy her. So it's not a complete no-show (which erases all trust), but it's an early change of plans.

Eg arrange to meet Thursday, but on Wednesday you say "Something's come up tomorrow, gotta reschedule".

Then you don't reschedule until Friday.

You'll need a solid thing that "came up" for the date later.

You've got a 10% chance of this working to your benefit..... more likely she's gonna go out on other dates and not wait around for you.

If you've got a lot of dates lined up this is a good plan: you'll lose many but get better investment from a few. That's fine, you've got too many dates anyway.

If you've got one date lined up this month: not worth it. You'll lose more than you gain.

PS as mentioned elsewhere: dinner dates are a fucking terrible idea..

Ok so i can speak on this because ive had this happen recently:

I hardly ever flake on people, just not in my character. Girls are different. But i flaked on this girl last month. Long story short my main girl hit me up last minute so i stood up the other chick. She texted me "Are you coming?" "You couldve at least told me you werent going to make it" blah blah. Overall she had a good attitude about the situation and didnt curse me out or anything. I didnt text back. This was going to be our first ever meet up, from Tinder.

I hit her up the next week. We had sex but half way through she purposely tried to piss me off. She gave me blue balls on purpose. I never had a girl do this to me.

At the end of the day I realized that she was open to meeting under the condition of solely trying to spite me back. I would be careful with rejecting a girl, and then re-engaging them after, if you have no sustained history of positive exchange overall. If you flake on your girlfriend it might work out for the better, because you have met up dozens of times to make up for the bad. But if its your first impression, an entitled girl will take upon the challenge to spite you back just to boost their ego back.

I advise against this strategy, there are other ways to show high value.