Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills

"Whats the difference if you have 10 couples sitting at the same table or 10 couples sitting at individual tables"

Usually 10 couples sitting at individual tables don't all need to pay at the same time.

fwsr in Not About Food

Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills

I'm in Canada and since March 31, 2011 liabiity shift is in effect i.e. if you swipe a chip card through a non-chip enabled terminal and it turns out to be stolen or fraudulent you get a chargeback with no recourse. It only takes one to find out the hard way that you need to run everything through the chip terminal.

In the old days a server could collect 10 cards, run them all through the swipe terminal on the POS (at maybe 10 seconds per card) and the only tough part was matching up each card. Now the server has to take the chip machine to the customer, enter the amount, insert the card, hand it to the customer who enters the tip, enters the PIN, hands it back to the server, gets their card and copy back, about a minute total per card.

I don't see why they wouldn't take your card if it doesn have a chip, liability shift doesn't apply in that case - i.e. if it swiped and was authorized and it later turns out to be stolen or fraudulent you don't get a chargeback if you followed proper procedures.

fwsr in Not About Food

Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills

I'm sorry, I think you missed my point. It's really easy on modern POS systems to split the bill so that exactly what each person had is listed, even to split items if people were sharing them. I wasn't suggesting that people should split the bill equally.

Lots of people use cards and I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't. I was just suggesting that people consider it, if they care to make things easier for the server. Obviously they can reject the notion for reasons of their own (eg. need to expense it, collect points, etc). I just posted because a group of co-workers may not prefer to sit around after lunch waiting for everyone to pay when they could be out of there a lot faster if some of them paid cash and didn't need change.

fwsr in Not About Food

Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills

Well it was just a suggestion for people who don't ask for separate bills out of consideration thinking it's easier for the server, there are a few like that. I thought if they knew that splitting the bill is easy, it's collecting for each bill that's hard, maybe some would care enough to bring cash and say "no change" or "$5 back, please". Yes, if everyone pays cash with $20 bills and wants exact change back then sometimes it's not any faster.

Of course we are in the hospitality business and we accommodate what people want, it's just that sometimes it doesn't occur to people that certain small things can make it a lot smoother for everyone (including the customers who aren't getting any service for the 10 minutes while the server is collecting payment, and the persons who can just plunk down their money and go instead of waiting for the payment machine to make its way around the table).

fwsr in Not About Food

Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills

With modern POS systems, splitting the check is no problem at all and it eliminates some of the problems with people not throwing in enough to to cover what they had. While splitting the check is easy, what often throws the server off is collecting for 10 separate checks using credit/debit cards. With the new chip and pin terminals it often takes a minute per card, so 10 minutes to collect payment, during which time the server's other tables are neglected.

Please consider making it easier for your server to provide good service, and bring cash in appropriate denominations if you're dining out in a group and getting separate bills.

fwsr in Not About Food

Rezbook Urbanspoon - for restaurant owners

I just signed up for it and I think it's great. I used Opentable before and it was way too expensive for what I got in extra business. I have a website with Google Analytics and a lot of the visits are from Urbanspoon, so I checked out Rezbook and signed up. Within a week I got a few reservations, some no-shows (now I call them to confirm). It's really cheap advertising - $2 per person for each seated reservation with no monthly fee. The app is only available on an iPad (I already had one) but you don't really need one if you're just using it as an add-on.

It doesn't give any points so it probably won't work for Opentable point-collectors (who cost me $1.35/person for 6 ppl spending $50 total, main reason I ditched OT), but so far it's been great advertising for minimal $$.

fwsr in Not About Food

Do Americans only have Thanksgiving dinner on the Thursday?

LOL! The real reason Thanksgiving is earlier in Canada is the shorter growing season - the harvest is usually complete the end of September. By the end of November most parts of Canada have had a least one snowfall.

And because the holiday is on Monday and people have to work the next day a lot of people (2/3, from what I can see) have the thanksgiving dinner on the Sunday night. It will be interesting to see if Americans here will come out for Thanksgiving turkey when they have to work the next day.

fwsr in Not About Food

Do Americans only have Thanksgiving dinner on the Thursday?

Thanks everyone for the info, you were very helpful. I think I'll run it on the Thursday and see how it goes.

fwsr in Not About Food