Food writer Andrea Strong raises two excellent and underconsidered big-think dining questions in her weekly column, “The Strong Buzz.”
First, what is the story with restaurants not seating incomplete parties? Why can’t we just sit down and
order drinks (and maybe have a little pre-dinner nosh), while waiting for that one friend that is always late?
Pure speculation: It may be that the first two or three hundred times that customers claimed their straggling friends would be nipping along smartly, only to have the latecomers arrive a full hour late, it was kind of cute. After that, it became ridiculous to let three people monopolize a table for six while waiting for Sheila and Dan to wrap up their monthly expedition to IKEA.
And what about refusing to transfer checks from the bar to the table? What’s the issue here?
This seems to be considerably more well grounded. We now have tiny, Wi-Fi–enabled animals that can tell you when your email has arrived, how your stocks are doing, and what the weather’s going to be —maintaining a single check for bar and restaurant seems to be well within the grasp of the modern dining
establishment.
That’s all about the tip!! The barman wants a bar size tip not a dinner tip.
it’s also simply annoying for the server to go into the point of sales system and transfer the drinks. a lot of times servers don’t have that kind of power and they have to track down a manager to do it for them.
with restaurants that rely on volume – dotty’s, shopsin’s, roscoe’s chicken and waffles – they don’t want to leave seats open for any longer than they have to. nicer places will usually let you sip some drinkies at your table while you wait.
wow. the bar thing? that’s a question? have all these foodies never worked in a restaurant? that’s truly mindboggling.
not only is it annoying to have to transfer the drinks, it opens up the system to questionable transfers and leaves room for the server or bartender to fiddle with amounts… not of course, that i am suggesting they would. merely that management doesn’t like that sort of access being tossed around willy-nilly. in restaurants in new york, where i use to work, not only was the staff a transient set of starving actors (or not so starving, as they picked your remainders off your plate), but more than a few had friends glomming for freebies by the bar.
additionally, in a full-service joint, one which requires reservations and has a substantial bar to cool your heels at while you wait, you generally have an entire secondary staff dedicated to your comfort beyond the main servers at your table. bartenders, barbacks, cocktail servers… the tip structure is not only different at a bar – $1 per drink instead of 20% (sometimes a deal when you look at the prices of those cocktails…) but the tipping out structure is different too, with a greater percentage alloted to the bar staff then the back of the house.
this means that when the drinks get transferred, you are cutting the total percentage that goes to your support staff for the bar, despite the fact they bore responsibility for your service. say what you want about tipping, but in the great number of establishments where servers go unsalaried, it seems fair to distribute remuneration according to responsibility, and thus… close your tab, then move to your table.
(as an aside, as my current life involves being abused by european wait and barstaff, i firmly support the tipping system we’ve got in place back home. incentive works wonders for service, and service is half the battle.)
After years of managing restaurants, I rarely believe anyone with a reservation for three or four who shows up as a deuce and wants to be seated, claiming that their friends will be there in just a few minutes… not when their friends don’t show and you hear one of them say “I thought it was just us for lunch”, and the friend says that “I always reserve for more people: this way you get a bigger table”. So the house sells two meals at a piece of real estate (the table) that should bring in four, the wait staff brings home less money, so that the self-important, inconsiderate clods get to sit at a bigger table. Many times you just read the situation: when two realize that they won’t be seated at the bigger table, they pretend to make a phone call and then tell me that their friends just had an emergency, or change of plans, or…. whatever comes to mind.
My regular customers, who I know wouldn’t pull such a stunt? They got seated immediately, even if they were the first to arrive for a party of ten!
On transferring drinks to the dinner check: when I’m at the bar, I tip the bartender as soon as he/she makes my first drink, and I tip well. It’s what you pay for better service. I’ve had it happen that the people next to me, who act as if it never occurred to them that they might have to actually pay for their drinks, let alone leave a tip for the person who made their drinks, asked to tranfer the drinks and were told that they couldn’t. When my table was ready, the bartender OFFERED to transfer my drinks. Fair? Maybe not… but what is? Life?
My father told me that there are three people you need to always have to be on good terms with, and alway have on your side:
Your lawyer, your clergyman and your bartender.