If You Have A Reservation, How Long Can a Restaurant Keep You Waiting?
Years ago, I worked at Jax Fish House Denver as the hostess. It was my job to smile at the bachelors, make sure any couples expecting children got their tables quickly, and keep the reservation book. Most nights, the latter task required little more than checking off a two-top for a designated hour, or coordinating with the servers to set up a 10-seater. But every once in a while the evening would get complicated. A large party would linger longer than expected. Or Jax would throw a themed dinner with a seating every two hours. Inevitably, diners would stay too long, and it would become impossible to turn the tables. On these nights, when parties with reservations arrived promptly on the hour, I'd have only bar stools for them. That's when I would begin pacing. Did table 3 have its bill? Had the older couple put in a dessert order? I needed to know what dining times I was up against, because my unwritten policy was that no party with a reservation should wait longer than 15 minutes.Â
Just as I would hold a table for a party running 15 minutes late, I expected the same courtesy of them. But after a quarter of an hour, I'd be in trouble. I'd have to explain the situation to the manager, and she'd have to buy the table-less group an appetizer. If in another 15 minutes the table still wasn't seated, she'd have to go in for a full round of drinks, or perhaps a bottle of wine, costing the restaurant some money. Yet, despite my tension about the 15-minute rule, I respected Jax's standard of compensating missed reservations with food and drinks. It prevented disgruntled-diner scenarios and a possible lost customer. I appreciate it even more now. On numerous occasions, diners have written in to 5280 complaining of well-known restaurants that made them wait an hour or more for their reserved tables without free food or drink. An hour or more? That hardly seems fair, and were I the diner, I'd probably ditch the restaurant altogether. But then again, patience has never been my virtue. So I wonder, how long should you wait for a table you've reserved?
Comments
Submitted by Nicole (not verified) on Wed, 2009-04-01 13:49.
I definitely hate waiting when I have taken the time to make a reservation.
I generally don't go to highly popular locations on weekends or special occasions - for just that reason. More than 15-20 and I start to get antsy and annoyed. More than 30 and I definitely take my business elsewhere!
Submitted by sara martinez (not verified) on Tue, 2009-03-31 23:34.
I hate making excuses to my friends for really wonderful restaurants that do not honor their commitment to a reservation. I adore Duo, Root Down, so many others, but unless one arrives right when they open or have early reservations...*sigh*
Submitted by Gail Buckley (not verified) on Tue, 2009-03-31 14:24.
30 minutes, tops. After that I would politely tell the host/hostess that they could cancel my reservation. Reservations help plan an entire evening and I may have plans after dinner that require me to be somewhere else at a particular time. I probably won't go back, there are just to many choices.
Submitted by Anna (not verified) on Sat, 2009-04-04 22:53.
In response to Michael,
Do you honestly think any restaurant could actually afford to stay open if they didn't run the risk of over booking sometimes? Restaurants profit between 3 and 5 CENTS on the dollar. (Yes, CENTS) The amount of diners who make reservations and never show up is astronomical. Not everyone you see in a restaurant is eating either. All too often they're "just having a cocktail".
You should realize that restuarants want to always please their guests, but it's an intense and unpredictable business.
Submitted by michael (not verified) on Tue, 2009-03-31 14:22.
What to do? Restaurants should not take so many reservations! It is hard to expect a table to turn more than two times per night - three if you open early. We can't get greedy as restauranteurs (and guests should be patient, ya, I wish!) Some countries deal with this by having only one to two seatings per night - it works well in Europe!
