Nobody wants to wait in a long line when they go out to eat. Lengthy restaurant wait times are a waste of time for busy people who need to eat quickly and can ruin the dining experience for those who want to enjoy a leisurely evening at their favorite restaurant.
Keeping restaurant wait times as short as possible is an essential aspect of restaurant management; if customers see a long line outside your business, they might go to your competitors or leave a negative review. Even if they decide to stay, long wait times can lead to a negative customer experience. Restaurant queues can also increase stress for front-of-house (FOH) and back-of-house (BOH) staffers, as they’ll have more customers to juggle.
The right table management strategies can help reduce your restaurant wait times and boost customer satisfaction — and we’re here to give you all the tips you need. We’ll tell you six easy ways to reduce restaurant wait times and a few strategies to improve the waiting experience for your customers.
If you’re struggling with long waiting times in your restaurant, here are six easy things you can do to help.
An effective way to reduce your restaurant’s wait times is to encourage potential customers to book a table instead of trying to manage walk-ins.
Setting up a sound booking system is easy. You can use a telephone system and a handwritten planner to keep track of reservations. It’s practically free (you just need a pen and paper), and you can get started immediately. You could also use a free online calendar or a spreadsheet template to organize incoming reservations.
However, booking tools like OpenTable, Resy, and The Fork can help you stay organized more efficiently. Customers can reserve a table online with just a few clicks, and your staff can get real-time updates about incoming reservations or cancellations. OpenTable also offers table management tools like a waitlist to help you organize your dining room and keep everything running smoothly.
Integrating these booking systems into your restaurant website is easy, and you can post booking links on your social media channels to encourage diners to book ahead. To increase reservation numbers, you could offer discounts for bookings made ahead of time. Alternatively, include booking links in your restaurant newsletters, or add a QR code to any flyers you use to advertise.
Another tip for reducing your restaurant’s wait times is to hire additional staff. If you don’t have enough FOH staffers (like servers and hosts), your customers must wait longer to check in and place their orders. Likewise, an insufficient BOH team means your chefs and line cooks will be slower to produce food for your customers, leading to slower table turnover.
By bringing in extra staff, you can ensure faster service from start to finish, as you’ll have more hands on deck to seat customers and prepare food promptly.
Maybe you don’t have the budget for additional staffing, or perhaps you run a fast-food restaurant and want to keep your dining room free from customers waiting around to order. In that case, self-service kiosks can be a fantastic way to reduce the average wait time in your restaurant.
With apps like KioskBuddy, customers can place and pay for their orders without staff assistance. The app works with the popular Square POS systems to make it easy to process orders. It can also work with your kitchen display system (KDS) to send orders directly to the BOH team, meaning your chefs can start prepping the order as soon as it’s made.
Self-service devices can work in place of or alongside staffed ordering points, letting you get through more orders more quickly.
If your restaurant floor plan allows, squeezing in a couple of extra tables can significantly reduce your restaurant’s wait times.
By finding the space for a few additional tables, you can seat more customers and reduce the time it takes for your diners to be seated after they arrive. It’s an easy way to seat more customers every shift.
Just remember to ensure your BOH team has the capacity to prepare more meals. If the main reason for lines at your restaurant is that you’re struggling to serve food fast enough, adding extra tables will only worsen this!
Many restaurants don’t have the space to add extra tables but still want to keep as many orders coming in as possible. If that sounds like you, offering takeout can be a fantastic way to go. A takeout system lets you serve more diners without needing to find them a table.
Customers can place orders online, by telephone, or in your restaurant on self-service kiosks. KioskBuddy lets you send SMS notifications to let customers know when their food is ready, meaning they don’t have to wait in your restaurant (which is especially useful if you’re short on space).
Again, your BOH team must be able to fulfill all orders, so make sure you discuss this idea with your head chef before setting it up.
Many of the most successful restaurants around the world — whether they’re quick-service restaurants or fine-dining establishments — prepare the majority of the food ahead of time. If you’re struggling to get dishes served quickly and it’s causing long waits in your business, it’s worth considering if you could prepare more dish components before opening each day.
Sit down with your head chef and see whether the dishes you’re serving could be prepared in advance and simply finished off and plated when orders come through. An effective kitchen prep system could make all the difference when it comes to serving food more quickly and reducing your restaurant’s wait times.
As hard as you try to reduce long lines in your restaurant, your customers might still have to wait a while at popular times. Luckily, there are a few easy ways you can improve the waiting experience for your diners.
Start by setting up a waitlist system for walk-ins. With waitlist software, your diners can wait elsewhere and receive an SMS notification when their table is almost ready. Some waitlist software also provides time estimates so customers can have a rough idea of how long they’ll need to wait for a table to open up — which is handy as it lets them know if they have time to get a drink or go for a walk.
If you have the space for it, you can carve out a dedicated space where customers can wait for a table. Add a bar so they can get a drink in your restaurant — this means you won’t lose out on additional income from drinks while customers are waiting. If your BOH team can handle it, you could even serve a few simple bar snacks like chicken wings or French fries.
Lengthy restaurant wait times can be detrimental to customer satisfaction and deter diners from coming back to eat at your restaurant again. With the right tools, you can minimize wait times and improve the dining experience at your eatery.
Self-service devices are a simple and effective way to reduce wait times in your restaurant. KioskBuddy lets you set up self-ordering in your restaurants quickly and easily. Customers can place and pay for their orders without a staff member — perfect for reducing lines and ensuring speedy service, even at busy times.
Download KioskBuddy today and enjoy a 30-day free trial.