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...Would you have the same feeling if we were discussing clients of professional services who would insist upon staying beyond their appointed time holding up other clients?? Probably not...and an interesting double standard.
How often is a doctor's appointment or haircut appointment not on-time? I certainly get peeved sitting an extra hour in those offices.
One thing, OP--you said they seemed to have lost your reservation, and that is certainly a pain in the butt. Looking at it from the restaurant's point of view, two diners without reservations showed up on one of the busiest nights of the year. They tried to accommodate you as best they could by finding you a spot in the lounge, rather than just turning you away. The service was slow, unfortunately; consequently people who DID have reservations had to wait for their table, the one where you were sitting.
I'm not in the restaurant business, but I think that if they had hustled a bit more and maybe greased the wheel with free dessert for you and complimentary drinks for the next couple, everybody could have been happier. It's not cool for the waitress to make you feel bad for being there, but who knows, maybe she was getting chewed out by the people who were waiting. It's a tough balance, I bet.
Most decent restaurants expect to turn a table around 2 or 3 times a night, with most people staying for 1.5 to 2 hours. Larger parties tend to stay longer. Sports bars are obviously an entirely different deal, I've sat at tables in sports bars for 10 or 11 hours.
As a past president said in his deposition.
At a high (highest?) end decent eating establishments, 2 or 3 turns at $150-$350 @ pop is about right.
But, the average eatery (where America treats the wife) requires 8 to 9 turns for the dinner shift, if the restaurant is running two shifts, with the dinner serving beginning 4:00 PM.
Franchise places have a limited menu, stuff that everybody orders, and pre-frozen entrees with back breaking seats, stadium lighting, and music designed to get you up and outa there. There, their profit margin whatever you order, is usually never below 38%.
It only happened to me once when I went to an early dinner with a large group of friends on New Years Eve. We were there for 3 hours and I TOTALLY understood why they asked us to leave since we had been there since 5pm and the evenings reservation crowd was starting to arrive. We didn't mind, we didn't even plan to stay that long but it worked out well for us and the restaurant because people in my party kept ordering things like fancy coffees and "just one more" dessert. We were ready to go anyway, just needed the nudge! We left a great tip too.
I avoid eating out on holidays usually, except on Christmas Day when we go for Sushi and it's mostly empty.
Exactly. Don't go to any restaurant on Valentines Day, any brunch place on Mother's Day, or any Bar on New Year's Eve.
Yep, we went out to eat on Mother's Day last year and we had to wait forever for a table then things were just crazy the whole time, server overwhelmed, food late, some of us hungry and cranky. Would have been better to stay home and eat.
At a high (highest?) end decent eating establishments, 2 or 3 turns at $150-$350 @ pop is about right.
But, the average eatery (where America treats the wife) requires 8 to 9 turns for the dinner shift, if the restaurant is running two shifts, with the dinner serving beginning 4:00 PM.
Franchise places have a limited menu, stuff that everybody orders, and pre-frozen entrees with back breaking seats, stadium lighting, and music designed to get you up and outa there. There, their profit margin whatever you order, is usually never below 38%.
I'm not sure what the turnover is expected to be for a chain place, but that didn't to be what the OP was talking about.
I do think 8 to 9 tables seems like a crazy turnover for tables, that means a service that runs from 5:15 to 10:15 turns every 25-30 minutes or so (assuming 5 minutes to clean and reset the table). Most services run from about 6:00 to 9:00, which would mean a turnaround time of about 10-15 minutes to reach 8-9 tables. Unless of course you mean "average" to mean McDonald's.
We've recently started eating out every couple of weeks at what goes for a high end restaurant in my town. The restaurant business is dead here in the winter, so we use it as an opportunity to try out new places.
We had early reservations for last night. They seemed to have lost the reservation but gave us a table in the lounge after an arguing couple vacated it. Service was pretty slow. We waited a long time to place our order. Starters came out quickly, but the entree took quite a while, maybe half an hour. They were busy, so neither of us really thought much of it. Desserts came with no forks, so we had to wait a few minutes before we could start eating them. It all added up to two hours.
The check arrived and we paid immediately. The hostess came up to us as soon as we'd finished paying and asked us to leave so some other people could have the table. My BF was still drinking his cognac, but he swallowed it down and we took off. The two people who were waiting did look like they had been there a while. Maybe they would have been less annoyed if someone had given them free drinks while they waited.
The whole thing really irritated me. We were not being slow about eating but the way the hostess told us to leave made it sound like we were naughty children. If she had waited five minutes, we would have been out of there. We were not the ones dragging out the evening - the restaurant was with their long wait times and general disorganization.
Way to a lose a regular customer.
I'd have told the hostess to summon the general manager to my table. I would then have explained to the GM all of the issues, and how the hostess's arrogance was the straw that broke the camel's back. If the GM did (or said) anything other than apologize & comp the entire meal, I'd have then contacted the corporate office, written an email to the editor of the local paper, and CC'd the paper's food critic.
bring in your lap top next time, they'd love seeing that on the table
many restaurants are struggling, so im sure many overbooked on valentines day
my problem is usually slow service which I get irritated,,,because everyone gets angry at the waitress when it may not be her fault,,,,,
when a hostess is fluttering around, not helping out an understaffed server,,,,this drives me nuts....yeah, I know shes a hostess but she can help out
its like waiting in line at the grocery store,,,,and seeing 3 cashiers chatting not opening up ...to keep people moving,,,
then everyone is pissed and grumpy because they have to wait too long...
Why are you punishing the person whose salary is tip reliant and had nothing to do with the situation at hand? Sounds like you're one of those who punish the server for a poorly cooked meal as well, since clearly they're involved in that process as well.
I had to go back and reread the original post to get that straight.
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Depends on what "It" means.
