No staff
Just about every restaurant in the area is suffering from staff shortages, especially since the college kids went back to school. It is not fair to see empty tables and assume you could be seated there. If you want good service to your customers, you can only seat so many people per server. Otherwise ALL customers would be unhappy because their service would be poor due to their server being swamped. If they only have, for example, 3 servers for the night, only so many diners can be accommodated.
Not having been there, it's possible the bad news of a 45 minute wait could have been delivered better? But the reality of a restaurant respecting it's ability to provide quality service to it's patrons is not a "problem". As recognized, reservations are very important. The restaurant won't overbook it's ability to serve so you are assured a spot and reasonable service.
My wife, who used to waitress, says that a typical number of tables assigned to a server might be 6. So with 3 servers, only 18 tables could be served.
We went to the Woodshed the other day and there were MANY empty tables and a wait to be seated. They have a nice room behind the bar they would love to use but they cannot because they simply don't have the staff to man it. If they did, they probably could have accommodated twice the number of diners. Do't you think the owners would love the extra business? Don't you think they would love to accommodate people instantly instead of telling people they have to wait 45 minutes and getting an angry response.
I understand the frustration of waiting to be seated and seeing empty seats but I "get" the problem the restaurants face as well.
|