The Reservations Book

[Trishiad]

I've had some interesting experiences lately with regard to reservations, both those I was making to dine out and a few at the resto I work in.

Are there any guidelines or even steadfast rules when it comes to:

percentage of the resto that should be left for walk-ins?

How long a party should be allowed their table?

Are parties generally asked to wait at the bar until their entire party is ready to be seated?

How late is late for a reservation?

Should the hostess insist on reserving at the beginning of dinner service instead of accepting reservations for an hour into dinner service?

any other advice or insight would be super.

[Qwerty]

It really depends...there is no such thing as a perfect system, invariably you WILL end up pissing some people off. The goal, of course, is to piss off as few people as possible.

It might help if you painted a clear picture of what type of establishment you are talking about. There is a huge difference in diners vs. fine dining.

A lot of restaurants keep up to 50% of the seats for walk in business. Tables should be allowed to sit at the table as long as they want, but generally you will (after some time) have a good idea of how long the average table takes to eat, so you can plan the chart accordingly.

Some places won't seat incomplete parties, some will. For various reasons. Not to put extra stress on the servers (several trips for drinks, talking about the same thing a few times, etc), to get them to spend a little extra money at the bar.

Usually places takes resis 15-30 minutes before closing. It varies. If in a very fine place they might not take you past a certain time (like, if your meal will take 4 hours and you arrive at 9:30, etc).

A lot of places tend to "overbook," so that in the inevitable no show, they can still maximize butts. Some places take credit card numbers to insure against no shows, most don't.

Like I said, there really are no hard and fast rules. If you are opening a plcae it's probably best to sit down, analyze what you THINK will work best, then adjust once you are open and have some stats to guide you.

Good luck.

[Trishiad]

Okay, so recently I made a reservation for 4 at a place which seats (at tables) probably 60ish. I wanted a 7 pm slot but was offered 6 or 8:30.

Is this because dinner service begins at 6 and a 7 o'clock reservation would leave that table empty for the first hour of service? Does that mean that we were going to be allowed the table for 2.5 hours? Did they reserve it again at 8:30.

What about a small resto which allows 1.5 to 2 hours per table and the table stays longer? There's no bar to wait in. The next party of 6 has arrived to find that their table is still occupied by a party who is meandering through their meal.

What to do with folks who reserve for 2 and show up as 4 thinking it's no big deal?

What to do if these things happen and you're a small and new resto really needing to make good impressions???

Is there a book on hostessing?

[Busboy]

Okay, so recently I made a reservation for 4 at a place which seats (at tables) probably 60ish.  I wanted a 7 pm slot but was offered 6 or 8:30.

Is this because dinner service begins at 6 and a 7 o'clock reservation would leave that table empty for the first hour of service?  Does that mean that we were going to be allowed the table for 2.5 hours?  Did they reserve it again at 8:30.

←

It might mean that the restaurant is so popular that they can book two seatings on their own terms to maximize turnover. What it probably means, though, is that everybody in the area code wants to eat at 7 o'clock and neither the kitchen not the floor staff can handle a huge elephant-through-a-snake-type service. Different cities I've spent eaten in have different times (Denver: 7PM; Washington DC: 7:30; Athens, Greece 9:30 or so) but every city seems to have one time at which everyone wants to eat.

At any rate, don't assume that you get 2-and-a-half hours if you take the 6PM reservation. They probably booked 7PM, then offered 6:30 and 7:30 to the next round of callers, and so on. They'll have allocated you the same amount of time as later arrivals. If you like to linger (as I do) best to get the earliest "late" reservation available, 8 or 8:30 say, so that the restaurant doesn't expect to turn the table but you don't make the staff sit around for an extra hour with your party as the only diners.