Guide · turn times
How long should a restaurant table last? Setting turn times you can keep
Every booking diary carries a guess about how long the table before it will take. When the guess is wrong, the 8.30 stands at the bar while the 7.00 orders coffee. A turn time is that guess written down, and it is worth writing down carefully.
Published
A turn time is a promise to the next booking
Most restaurants set one number for every table, usually two hours, and then run the evening by feel. The number is not wrong because it is long or short. It is wrong because it is the same for a couple on a weeknight and a table of eight celebrating a birthday, and because nobody ever checked it against the room.
The useful way to think about it: the turn time is not a target you give the floor, and nobody should be hurried out to meet it. It is the promise your diary makes to whoever is booked next on that table. If you keep that promise most nights, the second sitting arrives to a laid table. If you break it, the cost falls on the guest who did nothing wrong.
What the research found: the spread costs more than the average
Sheryl Kimes at Cornell spent years on restaurant revenue management and called the length of a meal the most erratic part of the operation. Her 2004 study of a busy Mexican restaurant in Arizona is still the clearest example. About seven parties in ten were one or two people, yet the dining room had fifty-three four-tops and not a single two-top. Seats sat empty while guests waited at the door.
Two changes followed. The tables were rearranged to match the parties who actually came: thirty-nine two-tops, thirty-five four-tops and two six-tops, on the same 230 seats. And the team worked on the minutes around the meal. The average dinner fell only from about 53 to 51 minutes, but the spread of meal times fell from nearly 23 minutes to about 15. The biggest single gain came from the wait between dropping the bill and taking the payment, which was cut almost in half.
That is the lesson worth carrying into a British dining room. You will not make people eat faster, and you should not try. You can make the evening more predictable, and a predictable table is one you can promise to the next party.
Measure a fortnight before you set anything
- 1
Write down three times per table
Seated, bill requested, table relaid. Two weeks of services is enough to see a pattern; one busy Saturday is not. A tablet at the stand or a sheet on a clipboard both work.
- 2
Group them by party size and by service
Twos, threes and fours, fives and sixes, larger. Lunch apart from dinner, Friday and Saturday apart from the rest. A set lunch for two and a Saturday dinner for two are different meals.
- 3
Take the time most tables beat, not the average
If most of your twos are relaid within 95 minutes, use that. The average hides the long tail, and the long tail is the table the 8.30 is waiting for.
- 4
Add the reset on purpose
Clearing and relaying is part of the turn. Five minutes for a two-top, ten or more for a pushed-together eight. If you leave it out, the diary books a table that is still covered in glasses.
Pacing: the kitchen has a turn time too
A full set of free tables does not mean the pass can feed them. Twenty covers seated at 7.30 is a different evening from twenty covers spread between 7.00 and 8.00, even though the diary looks the same. So alongside the turn time, agree with the kitchen how many covers it can take in any fifteen or thirty minutes, and let the diary refuse the booking that would break it rather than leave the head chef to absorb it.
The two rules work together. Turn times decide whether a table is free; pacing decides whether the kitchen is. A Saturday that runs well usually has a slightly shorter turn on twos than you would guess, and a pacing ceiling that stops the 7.30 pile-up.
Where the minutes really go
- Seat to first drink: a greeting within a couple of minutes takes nothing off the guest and a lot off the evening's drift.
- Bill to payment: bring the card machine with the bill when the guest asks for it, and pick up the folder promptly. This is where Kimes found the most time.
- The reset: a dedicated runner clearing during the busiest hour is cheaper than a second sitting that starts twenty minutes late.
- Large tables: a party of eight booked into a two-hour slot is usually a promise you will break. Give them longer, and say so when they book.
Writing the numbers into Slotora
- Turn times are set per party size, and each service (lunch, dinner, a separate Saturday dinner) can have its own.
- A pacing ceiling caps the covers that may start in a rolling window, so the online page stops offering 7.30 once the kitchen is full.
- The reports show turns, chair utilisation and average party size, so after a month you can check whether the numbers you set match the evenings you had.
- At the host stand the rules guide the suggestion; your staff can still seat a table where they judge best.
- Each host signs in with their own login, so during the measuring fortnight the change log shows who seated a table and when. When one Saturday two-top ran forty minutes over, you know whom to ask rather than guessing.
Turn times: short answers
Should I tell guests how long they have the table?
If the time is tight, yes, at booking and kindly. A guest told that the table is theirs until 9.15 rarely minds; a guest asked to move without warning usually does.
Is two hours a sensible default?
It is a common starting point for dinner, but your own fortnight of seated and relaid times is a better one. Many restaurants find twos need less and large tables need more.
What about guests who linger on a quiet night?
Let them. The turn time matters when someone is booked next on that table; on a quiet night it is just a number.
Sources
Turn times and pacing in Slotora · Covers reports · Combining tables · All guides