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Eating
Out Etiquette
By Robert Thomas
It's a Friday night; the casual dining
restaurant is busy as you arrive with friends. How long is too
long for your party to be greeted and seated?
That's one question a University of Missouri hotel
and restaurant management researcher asked in a study of acceptable
waiting times for dining customers.
“The problem of waiting is critical
in service encounters. No customer feels satisfied if he or she
has to wait too long. Identifying acceptable waiting times is
an important step in the management of a restaurant,” said
Johye Hwang.
Customers may place different levels of importance on their waiting
experiences for each service stage, she said. In this study, she
broke the dining experience into six stages: greeting, seating,
ordering, serving, receiving the check and paying.
Respondents were asked to indicate satisfactory, unsatisfactory
or very unsatisfactory waiting times for each stage.
Survey respondents indicated that an average greeting time of
2.6 minutes is satisfactory, but they become upset if this wait
exceeds five minutes. After eight minutes they are ready to leave.
When it comes to seating, respondents said 16 minutes is satisfactory,
but 28 minutes is too long, and 40 minutes is definitely too long.
Age and gender indicated considerable differences in customers'
expectations of waiting times.
Hwang found that male customers place more importance on waiting
for a table than females.
“This means men are more likely to leave if the restaurant
is crowded,” she said. Males also place more importance
in wait times for receiving the check and paying.
Females were less patient when it comes to the wait time for ordering.
Customers over age 60 placed more importance on the seating stage
than ordering; younger groups thought the wait stage for ordering
was more important.
In general, customers can tolerate longer waits at the seating
and serving stages, but not those for greeting, ordering and paying.
“Customers expect shorter wait times for paying, perhaps
because this stage influences their departure time,” Hwang
said.
The study was designed as a management tool to provide restaurant
operators with insights in acceptable waiting times for customers,
she said.
The restaurant operators must assess customer expectations and
set standardized service levels to provide consistency during
service. They can plan staffing and resource allocation in a multi-stage
service delivery process from the customers’ point of view,
she said.
Editor's Note: This story
was provided courtesy of the MU Extension and Agricultural Information
office.
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Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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