whomper Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 I am a banquet bartender so the party ends a certain time and thats that. My bro bartends at a nice Italian restaurant and one problem he deals with sometimes is at the end of the night the restaurant pretty much empties out but there is a table where people are talking and nursing a drink or coffee when the entire staff is pretty much ready to go. They never approach the people because its bad for business but Det and others How do you deal with table lingerers ? Even during the night if you are super busy and people are waiting and there are people that are pretty much done with their meals but they are not leaving. What do you do ? Im just curious Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bpwallace49 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 You have to suck it up and deal with it. It is an enormous PITA, especially after banquets if you need to flip the room and have the whole set up crew waiting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh B Tool Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Visine, but hey I'm old school Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godtomsatan Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 A distant cold stare while wiping off a long knife generally works wonders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detlef Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 You have to suck it up and deal with it. It is an enormous PITA, especially after banquets if you need to flip the room and have the whole set up crew waiting. This. Case in point. I used to work with a guy who was super old school. Would avoid doing this at all costs. We had a really small place so campers would really mess up our night and I recall one table and how much dude kept on keeping me updated in the kitchen about how they'd been sipping on coffee for literally hours and that he was finally going to do it. But it was killing him to approach them. Again, I worked with this guy long enough to know this was not something he took lightly and I'm sure he approached the situation with extreme caution. Turns out, they were parents of a friend of mine and I got a call the next day. "Just want to say that last night's meal was delicious but I do resent the fact that, no sooner than we'd put down our forks, our plates were taken away and we were curtly told by your maitre'd he needed the table back." Absolute lies. But it doesn't matter. It's a battle you can't win. I can recall either doing so or being at a place when it was done, maybe 5 times in 30 years in the business. Each and every time when we were simply over a barrel and at least half of those 5 did not go well at all. Oh, and I'm not talking about people staying late. That's just annoying, but nowhere near the grave issue of someone camping in the middle of the night, holding up a table. Especially when you need that one and the one next to it to push together into a large table and have basically no other options in the dining room. This, of course, is after much thought went into mapping out the evening before the start of service to avoid this very thing. Problem is, the only way to completely avoid this sort of thing is to plan on excessively long turns which drastically reduces how much money you can make that night because you end up turning away a bunch of people. Small places, the very ones that are most exposed to this sort of thing happening (because the bigger you are, the sheer number of tables you do will mean that the occassional camper can be worked around and averaged out by everyone else), just can't afford to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorcher Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 (edited) If I needed to flip a room and they were lingering, I would adjust the room temp. If it was winter I would turn on the A/C, if it was summer I would turn on the heat. I didn't do a drastic change, it was subtle and I would hear people saying they were hot and let's go somehwere else. This also worked for me as a restaurant manager. One time I had the A/C on in the winter and forgot to turn it back. The poor bus guy was shivering while he finished up. Edited April 27, 2012 by Scorcher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sundaynfl Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 A friend of mine owns Le Peeps and as we were having breakfast outside, we started talking about a beer and wine license for this particular place. The "linger" effect was one of the reason's he hasn't pursued a liqour license. Although, drinks are a higher profit margin, what are the costs of not being able to turn the tables... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detlef Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 A friend of mine owns Le Peeps and as we were having breakfast outside, we started talking about a beer and wine license for this particular place. The "linger" effect was one of the reason's he hasn't pursued a liqour license. Although, drinks are a higher profit margin, what are the costs of not being able to turn the tables... This is the first time I've ever heard of someone concerned that people would stick around ordering booze. What they're usually drinking when I wish they'd go home is coffee. I'm pretty sure I'm speaking for my waiters as well when I say that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEC=UGA Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 As a waiter (and owner, from speaking with a few people) is that table that keeps ordering booze at a relatively brisk rate. You'll bever be run off (a table of 3 or more) ordering two to three drinks per person, per hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sundaynfl Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 This is the first time I've ever heard of someone concerned that people would stick around ordering booze. What they're usually drinking when I wish they'd go home is coffee. I'm pretty sure I'm speaking for my waiters as well when I say that. That's what I thought as well! It's not often that our booze tab is as much, if not more than the food! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.