I saw this report where they say so many people go into restaurants that have wifi that they are taking so much longer to order, eat, and generally finish so they can turn the table. One study says an average of 35 minutes more.
So I have to ask - how important is wifi to you when you choose a place to eat?
Also do you have any other suggestions for restaurants to deal with this? Ex. Charging extra? Limiting time at table?
I think the furthest would be a cell signal blocker so nobody can do anything but talk to each other.
My son is a server at Cracker Barrel. They deliberately don’t have Wi-Fi. So, he uses data while working there. Costs money on the phone plan, but at least his tables get a good turn. I think Cracker Barrel is one of the very few major chains that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.
Wow, this is a very American problem. Only in America do we treat our restaurants as revolving door food conveyor belts. It is not, and should not be, a race to see how fast we feed our people and shove them out the door. Eating out in the European countries that I have visited is a much different experience. Much more leisurely and fun. Enjoy the food, don’t scarf it down. One article I saw was about a restaurant that found an old security video from before smart phones. They were able to get the average customer in, fed, and out in about one hour and 5 minutes. Post cell-phone, the average was 50 minutes longer. I say that staying in the restaurant for longer is better. It is more enjoyable, and would bring back my repeat business, but maybe that is just me.
Do we have any reason to believe this is a problem? Lots of restaurants actively advertise to teleworkers, who help fill otherwise empty tables in the slow daytime periods. I don’t often see people busting out their computers during the dinner rush.
The bar I hang out in has wifi. I love it. I remember when people would sit at a bar, all smoking cigs. Now people sit at a bar, all looking at Facebook.
Having Wi-Fi is never a factor in where I choose to dine.
But, if it were my restaurant, and there were people hanging out at the tables using the Wi-Fi, if I had the space, I might provide some other seating options for people that just want to hang out and drink coffee. That might free up table space?
But, is Wi-Fi still a big draw? I travel to rural areas occasionally and I only see those signs in places that have poor 4G/3G connectivity.
Agree. Vacationing outside the US it is so nice to have to ask for our check, instead of having it slapped down when you are 3/4 finished with the entree. After dinner espresso or aperitifs are the way to go. It’s not unusual to overhear nearby vacationing Americans complaining, “damn, where’s our check?” as they finish eating, simultaneously gathering their stuff.
I just got back from ten days in England and we regularly felt rushed through restaurants. Once, in fact, we were asked to leave as another party had a reservation for our table (we’d only been there an hour).
It is common in the UK for more casual places (where you seat yourselves) to have cards on the table indicating when there is a booking. You’re welcome to sit there and eat there but you need to vacate before the time its booked.
But to be seated at a table and/or not advised (verbally or with a card) that it’s booked for a certain time is bad!
Back to the OP, the presence or absence of wi-fi would not affect my restaurant choice. Meal times are social occasions for talking to each other and enjoying good food together.
The only time I might choose a place with wifi is when we are travelling overseas or somewhere without network coverage and we want to sit down for a bit to rest and have some quiet time with a drink. In that instance, I would choose a coffee shop with wifi over a coffee shop without.
I’m the opposite - I hate having to ask for my check. I’d actually prefer to pay for my food when I order it, like in fast-food restaurants, instead of afterwards. I consider having to ask for my check to be a sign of bad service.
According to the article I saw, its a problem because people are complaining about two things - 1) slow service. Because they aren’t ready to order when the waiter comes by, the waiter is balancing multiple tables where people tell him to go away, they are too busy checking in on Facebook. That slows down service for everyone - more, it changes the perception - we’ve been here fifteen minutes an no one has taken our order yet…ignoring that the waiter has been by three times and you haven’t been READY yet. 2) Slow seating - a restaurant that used to be able to say “that table has been there half an hour” and then tell you it would be about 20 minutes before there is a free table, can’t do that anymore. That means longer waits when you wait for a table.
From a restaurants’ perspective - its lower turnover. That means that although the profit per table is the same, the number of tables served in a night goes down. Less profit - and restaurants often work on fairly dicey margins to start with - you make your money Friday and Saturday night with high volume. It also means less in total tips for the waitstaff - another big difference between Europe and the U.S. - in Europe the waitstaff isn’t dependent on turning tables for their income. In the U.S., if I linger over a table for more than an hour, I personally make sure to really overtip to compensate the waiter for him not having another check to get tips on during that time - not everyone does.
And it isn’t laptops - its phones. Its the first I need to check in. Then I need to check facebook. Oh, look at this cute picture of a cat. Text message from Kari - do you guys want to meet up with her later, oh…yeah, menu, suppose I should…then later, its lets all take pictures of our food and get them posted before we eat - for three courses. And of course the cocktails need pictures, and maybe a link to the recipe for the cocktail.
I agree. First there’s the wait for someone to bring you the check, and most of the time I find you have to ask for it. So they bring you the check then disappear for the next 30 minutes. I’ve got to the point now when I tell them I’d like to pay straight away as they are putting the check on the table.
Again, I don’t think people are generally gojng to town with the wifi on busy Friday night. I think heavy wifi use is primarily a mid day phenomenon, when tables would otherwise be empty.
I don’t keep wifi in mind if I am dining with friends. But if I am planning to work someplace, I will look for wifi, outlets, and telework friendly seating arrangements. It’s not hard to know which places actively court teleworkers and which ones don’t.
I love the UK, but I have to say that with one exception (a bar in Scotland where we went for drinks, sat at the bar, and got an Aussie bartender) service was lousy - and not in the “things are different here” way - but in the fact that the staff all seemed to hate their jobs and took it out on their customers. There wasn’t a restaurant I went to that I’d return to in the U.S. Granted - American tourist, I’m not a likely repeat customer. And also, granted, at home I’m a creature of habit who has a few places I go to regularly where the waitstaff knows me.
It really isn’t wi-fi or not wi-fi - its the existence of data service of any type for which wi-fi isn’t necessary which creates the problem in restaurants.
(And, frankly, I’m old fashioned. When I go out to dinner with you, I want to go to dinner with you. Not you and your Instagram account and your Facebook friends and the guy you are carrying on a text conversation with).
i consider getting the check before asking for it as a rude attempt to get me to leave as quickly as possible. I guess we can take from this that the waitstaff can never do it right.
It sounds like it’s then for restaurants to adapt then.
Write a program tracking traffic and waitstaff activity, and plan your schedules around that-- boom, problem solved (though I am sure that already happens, thus this is actually a non-issue made up to bulk up the complaints.) Putting yourself out there on reservation services and getting those little beepers can help (or have people pre-request a place on the wait list via smartphone before they arrive, and then they can just wait for the alert rather than having to check in!). Maybe you can even use your analytics to post estimated waits on your website.
Make an app for ordering via device. Maybe give each table a tablet for it. Or, you know, train your waitstaff to work with the new norm for ordering.
Definitely don’t discourage the food pics and status updates. That is free publicity! It’s gold! Give each table a good warm light so people’s cocktail pics are more flattering. Maybe even include a photo utility in your app so people can add branded stickers to their photos (a sombrero at Chevy’s? Romantic picture frame at Chez Fancy?).
Make ordering easier by including nutrition information and other relevant stuff on the menu.
And if you, with the world of tools available at your fingertips, still can’t figure out how to make a restaurant profitable without trying to force everyone to pretend like it’s 1973, maybe you ought to go run a buggy whip store or something and leave room for the bright and creative people who can adapt to new paradigms.
sven, speaking for a team of IT people who were known to capture a manager’s Slaveberry while in one of the most expensive restaurants in Spain and apologize deeply to the waiters, you can put the requirement for new paradigms where we put the gizmo in question.
That would be in Diego’s pocket. He’s bigger than the boss.
