Playbook, restaurant
The wait time is an estimate made by somebody standing in the room
A waiting list in a restaurant is not a queue. It is a host holding a tablet and a rough idea of which tables are on dessert, matching parties to furniture as it frees, which is why a couple who arrived twenty minutes after a group of six will often be seated first. Explaining that in advance is most of the work, because the guest who understands the mechanism waits happily and the guest who thinks it is a numbered queue starts counting people.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for waiting lists holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The list is matched to table shapes rather than run in order, so party size decides position more than arrival time does, and a guest who has not been told that reads the seating of a later couple as favouritism.
- Any wait time given is a guess about how long a table already seated will take over pudding, and it is made by a person who can see the room, which is precisely why an assistant with no view of the floor cannot repeat it.
- Many restaurants deliberately hold back part of the room for walk ins rather than selling every table, so whether walk ins are welcome is a policy that varies by night and by section and is worth stating rather than leaving to be discovered at the door.
- The bar or counter is often the real answer, because a couple who will eat the full menu at the bar can be fed immediately while a table for four cannot, and most sites never mention that the bar takes food.
How it arrives
- do you take walk ins
- how long is the wait for a table tonight
- can you put us on the list
- do you hold any tables back for walk ins
- can we eat at the bar without booking
- is it worth turning up early on a saturday
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your walk in policy by night and by area | Whether the whole room is bookable, which part is kept for walk ins, and how that differs between a Tuesday and a Saturday. If you stop taking walk ins after a certain hour, that hour is the single most useful thing on this page. |
|---|---|
| How the list is run, in plain terms | That the host takes a name and a mobile number, that parties are matched to tables rather than seated in order, whether you text when a table comes up, and how long you hold it once you have called. Guests accept a system they can see the shape of. |
| Where somebody can wait, and whether it costs anything | Whether there is a bar to wait in, whether waiting guests are served, whether they can wait outside, and whether the pub next door is where everyone actually goes. Say it, because the alternative is a group standing in a doorway blocking your service. |
| Eating without a table | Whether the bar or counter serves the full menu, a shorter menu or nothing, how many seats there are, and whether those seats can be booked. This converts more waiting parties than any other fact you can publish. |
The reply
We keep part of the room back for walk ins rather than selling every table, so it is always worth coming in, though Friday and Saturday from about eight are the hardest [1]. The way the list works is that the host takes your name and a mobile number and texts you when something comes up, and parties get matched to whichever table frees, so a two sometimes goes in ahead of a larger group [2]. There are also six stools at the bar which serve the full menu and cannot be booked, so they are worth looking at first if there are two of you. I have no view of the room tonight, so I cannot tell you what the wait is at the moment.
It gives the mechanism before the caveat, because the mechanism is the part that stops the guest feeling badly treated later. The bar is offered as a route rather than a consolation, since for a couple it is often the faster answer. It closes by naming the one thing it cannot know instead of softening it, which is what keeps the rest of the answer trustworthy.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks to be added to the list, asks how many are ahead of them, or asks whether to set off now for a table tonight.
I cannot add anybody to the list or see how busy the room is, since the list lives with the host on the floor. Call the restaurant and they will tell you what the wait looks like right now, or leave me your name, an email and your message and I will pass it on for later tonight.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a wait time, because the only person who can estimate one is looking at which tables are on coffee and an invented figure sends a family across town for nothing.
- Never say somebody has been added to the list, since nothing has been written anywhere and they will arrive expecting to be expected.
- Never promise the bar will have a seat, when six stools on a Saturday go in the first twenty minutes of service.
- Never suggest a walk in is likely on a night you know is fully committed, because a hopeful answer here costs the guest an evening rather than a phone call.
Questions
- Can it hold a place on the list for somebody?
- No. It cannot write into anything, and a waiting list is the most live thing in the building. What it can do is explain how the list works and how to get on it, which removes the call that interrupts the host at the busiest moment of the night.
- We do not take walk ins at all. Is this page still worth it?
- It is, and it should say so bluntly with the hours. Restaurants that only take bookings still spend all evening telling people at the door, and every one of those conversations started with somebody who could have read it before setting off.
- Should we publish which nights are hardest?
- Yes. It costs nothing and it moves demand. Guests who read that Saturday from eight is difficult book a Thursday, and the ones who come anyway have already accepted the wait before they walk in.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling waiting lists in generalExpectation setting is the whole job: how the list is ordered, how contact is made, and whether a short notice cancellation can reach them.
- The guest is not asking for informationA cold main, a forty minute gap between courses, a table by the door. What to record, and why the answer is never a policy paragraph.
- The menu price is not the line at the bottom of the billThe set lunch runs on certain days, the fish is market price, the steak carries a supplement, and service goes on at the end.
- A cancellation typed into a chat box is a no showReleasing a table takes notice the kitchen can still use, and cancelling in a chat window is not cancelling. Say which channel counts.
Try it on your own material
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