Up to how late/close to closing is it acceptable to order something at a resturant?

Cafe Society
1

You just got off a late shift at work and see your favorite pizzeria is still open until 9PM and it’s 8:50PM, is it still acceptable to order?

I ask this because I remember a few years ago there was a Twitter thread where multiple restaurant employees complained about people ordering food 30 minutes before closing because in their view “the last 30 minutes of opening should be spent stacking chairs, cleaning and closing up, not making people’s food” because it takes about 30 minutes to fully close and they can leave work “on-time” if they don’t have to make people’s food for the last 30 minutes.

So do you personally care about any of this? Me? As long as it’s 5 minutes before closing I don’t care and assume the place is still running and making food up until then. I know plenty of places that make 15 minutes before closing the “cut-off point” which rubs me the wrong way, since the sign is “Closes 10PM” not “Closes 945PM” and unless it’s a super large or complicated order I don’t see why they can’t accommodate a single person ordering. [poll type=regular results=on_vote chartType=pie]

  • Up until the very last second until closing
  • 5 minutes before closing
  • 10 minutes before closing
  • 15 minutes before closing
  • 30 minutes before closing
  • 45 minutes before closing
  • If I’m still in line at exactly closing time I still expect to get my order in
    [/poll]
2

I ask them if it’s OK to order. The staff will let me know what they are able to do.

3

Does anyone know why the poll is not working? I clicked “Build Poll”

4

If it’s a place that only does take-out, then what is the possible meaning of “closing time” if it’s not the last time you can order?

A dine-in restaurant that also does take-out is different, since obviously customers who are dining in will be finishing their meals. I think it’s normal for the kitchen to close half an hour before they expect people to leave.

Either way, surely it’s not down to customer etiquette over whether it’s “acceptable” to order, or for customers to be concerned over whether staff have time to clean up. It’s up to the management to decide their kitchen hours, and to pay the staff for whatever amount of time is required to clean up after it closes. Staff don’t all walk in at opening time and leave at closing time.

5

I don’t mind ordering takeout up until close to the last minute. But for sit down dining I don’t like to feel rushed or make the staff work any longer than they have to. So if there’s less than an hour before closing I won’t go in to eat.

6

Plenty of places have posted announcements that the kitchen closes at a certain time before the place’s actual closing time. That’s to ensure the customer can order the food, the kitchen can prepare it, and the customer can finish the meal before closing time.

I’ve no idea if this is a universal, but it strikes me as a mighty fine idea.

7

15 minutes for a take out place, I treat it like a bar with a last call.

One hour before close for a sit down place.

I’m prepared to hear they’re out of something and not complain. I also try to not order a surf and turf meal too late at a seafood place or a seafood dinner at a steak house if I’m showing up late. That’s just me from having worked in the back and knowing what they start to put away and break down first

8

I think it’s up to the restaurant to make it clear, if they don’t want people ordering after a certain time. I’ve seen signs along the lines of “restaurant closes at 9pm, last orders taken at 8:15” or whatever. That seems reasonable to me.

9

I worked late into the night for a while, and a favorite restaurant was on my way home. They were open late, closing in the wee hours, and I’d often stop and get a to-go order on my way home. I got off work about an hour before the restaurant closed, so there was plenty of time.

One night, I was delayed (traffic accident–not mine, but I was caught in the traffic backup), and got there five minutes before closing. I got a to-go order and while they could put it together, they made it clear that they were doing it for me, whom they saw so often. Anybody else, maybe not. But they also suggested that I could phone ahead, and they’d have my to-go order ready when I got there. After all, I patronized them enough to have memorized the menu, so I didn’t need to see one of those.

A simple solution, and it worked. I phoned in my order from work when I clocked out, and in the twenty minutes it took me to drive to the restaurant, they got everything ready for me. I could walk in, pay, and take my food in no more than five minutes; and if I was later than usual (as happened that one night) they could serve me and close on schedule.

10

For a takeaway, the last acceptable time IS the posted closing time. It is up to the takeaway management to bias this time to a reasonable offset.

For a sit-own restaurant, the same. However many restaurants around here show their operating time like this:
open 07:00
last food orders 21:30
closing 22:00

The onus is not on the customer to guesstimate how long the kitchen needs to complete the last orders. Some meals take 8 minutes from confirmed order to table delivery. Some meal types require 2.5 hours for the same.

For a “resturant” as asked by the OP?
Just try. If they misspelled their business type, they quite possibly misspelled their posted operating hours, too.

11

More than once I was sitting in a restaurant when the waiter came over and asked us if we wanted to order anything else, because the kitchen was about to close. We did not even have to look around for any posted signs.

12

Eh, there’s acceptable and there’s acceptable.

The actual rules are, in general, that if you’re there in the restaurant before the listed closing time, you get to order and be served.

If you do that, it’s polite to just get a couple things and not hang around. If they close at 10 and you walked in at 9:59, you probably shouldn’t get appetizers and salads and then main courses and then elaborate desserts after dinner and so forth. But if you wanted to, you would have the right to.

Staff annoyance based on what they thought might happen may or may not be anything you can predict. I’ve worked in a few different places and in most, we didn’t start closing until closing time. If you were, at least, done ordering by close, we were good. We did get a little irritated if it got to be quarter past and you wanted another appetizer or whatever and if it got to the point where we were done cleaning everything in the kitchen and we had nothing left to do except for your table, your glasses, and sweeping and mopping the dining room and you were taking your sweet time just hanging out and gossiping… then we started thinking less-than-kind thoughts about you.

The most recent restaurant where I worked, though, very regularly had no business the last hour or more, so it was not at all unusual for us to walk out five minutes after the posted closing time. It was a whole different type of restaurant, though- more take-out than fine dining. At that place, how late it was “okay” to order depended entirely on things you had pretty much no way of knowing, controlling, or predicting. If we were dead slow and hadn’t seen anyone in two hours, then coming one hour before close might throw a wrench in our gears. Or coming 15 minutes before close might be awesome if we had been going steadily and your order got us closer to running out of food. Ordering chips at the most recent place were a giant pain in the butt because we fried those fresh. At the previous place I worked, chips were about the easiest thing you could order because we ordered them from a company, so serving you chips just meant taking them out of the box and putting them in the bag/bucket/whatever.

My point is… don’t worry too much about it, really. Be conscientious, kind, and thoughtful if you’re there right at close (or anywhere, all the time). Maybe ask, but don’t necessarily expect the servers to be super honest. They know being cheerful is how they get paid. Same as with any business, though: you’re allowed to go there right up until the posted closing time. You might make someone’s life/job a bit harder if you do and it’s up to you if that matters to you. As the customer, as long as you’re generally polite and courteous, it’s okay if it doesn’t. There’s not necessarily a rule that will apply to all restaurants or even one restaurant on all nights, though. Apart from, that is, leave when they close. That’s pretty universal.

That said, I do avoid going places at least a half hour or so before closing. Longer if I plan to sit down.

13

In my experience if you come in close to closing time the staff will inform you of the situation. And while you may be able to order 1 minute before closing time your late dinner will be accompanied by staff cleaning up around you. Wiping stuff down with smelly cleaners and putting up chairs on tables around you. Lights may go full on. It’s not a pleasant dining experience, but if you are drunk you probably don’t care anyway. It’s to be expected.

14

In theory, you should be able to order right up to closing, if there is no notice that “no seating past 9” or whatever. And right up to that time, whatever it is. If the restaurant is one of those that forgets it is there to serve customers, not the other way around, maybe they should get into a different line of work.

A smart restaurant would “guide” the customers. Put the “closing” hours well in advance of the time to finish cooking and cleaning, but still take customers right up to the second before “closing”.

In practice, remember the rule: don’t piss off the guy that makes your food or cuts your hair.

15

Might also depend on what you order.

I once made it to a restaurant right before closing time; the restaurant did both sitdown and takeout. What I asked them was what they had readily available for takeout, and I ordered from that selection. They seemed quite pleased with that sort of order; I wasn’t going to be hanging around at a table, I wasn’t asking them to start making anything that took time, and I was leaving them with fewer leftovers to put into storage or discard.

16

It’s my experience the host/ess will tell you what the deal is when you walk up to them.

Yeah. If you just want a burger, they can probably help you out. If you want the paella, you’re probably out of luck.

17

Maybe the whole concept of “closing time” should be tweaked a bit when it comes to sit-down restaurants. Posting something like “Last Seating at 9 pm” would remove a lot of the ambiguity.

As a diner, I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule; I try to read the situation. If the place is still bustling 15 minutes to closing, I feel ok about sitting down. If they’re putting up chairs a half hour early, I’ll probably move on.

But I’d say one full hour is the point at which I’m not even going to worry about it. If you clean and empty the fryers an hour ahead of time and I come in and order fries - that’s on you, not me.