Flow of service in dining area?

Question

Hi there, we have a thesis subject and i need some information regarding flow of service in a dining area (restaurant or hotel). i need some references about this topic.. pls give me some references or any useful info. It can be from foreign literature, foreign studies, and thesis... thanks!

Answer 1

Ummm if this is your paper why aren't you doing the research????

Answer 2

I never knew there was a book about this.

You may just have to speak with restaurant employee's. Start with hosts. They plot out the tables for the evening. One thing you should know about are "turn times." That's the amount of time it takes a guest to eat a meal. At the restaurant I work at, a party of 2 usually takes about an hour and a half, a party of four: 2 hours, 5-6, 2.5 hours, 7 or more: 3 hours. But these times are not always true. There are folks that are in a rush or some that like to sit for a long time (aka campers.)

Now, there are things hosts like to do to keep the flow steady. One is pacing the reservations. I don't want to sit 10 reservations at 7:00 and 2 or 3 before or after. My kitchen would get a serious spank. So we try to space out reservations for the evening to give the kitchen ample to time to get meals placed on the tables and to give my servers ample time to serve the tables in a proper fashion. If the kitchen gets backed up, all h**l can break loose. Overseating at one time can also back up the bar for the same reason having a full bar and tons of drink orders come in can be overwhelming.

When the problem of campers arrive (they tend to sit so long that they go into someone else's reservation) some things that some places do is invite them to the bar or another seating area with the intention of buying them dessert or a round of drinks, thus getting the pace back.

Guests arriving late can totally s***w up a restaurants flow. Some folks intentionally arrive late because they may have originally wanted a reservation at a later time. To make this up, most places will let guests know ahead of time that they only hold tables for a certain amount of time, have them dine in another part of the restaurant, sit them at a later time or reschedule their reservation.

I once had a server who would s***w up my turn times so that she wouldn't have to stay late to clean up. My other servers would be repeatedly screwed over. We've learned to not place notice of late reservations on our written floor plan. So when our ethical servers  got all the mid timed reservations, she would eventually get the late reservations of the evening.