Improving table turns

Turning tables faster has a bad reputation because it is usually attempted by hurrying guests, which guests notice and resent. But most of a slow turn is not the meal at all. It is the dead time either side of it, and recovering that costs the guest nothing.

Where the minutes actually go

Break a turn into its parts and the recoverable time is obvious: seating to first order, order to food, food to paid, paid to cleared, cleared to next party seated. Guests only experience the middle. The first and last segments are entirely yours.

• ✓Seating to first order. A party sitting with menus and no contact is dead time that also reads as poor service.
• ✓Paid to cleared. A table that is finished but not reset is unavailable, and this is the segment most rooms measure least.
• ✓Cleared to seated. If the host does not know the table is free the moment it is, the gap is however long it takes someone to walk past and notice.

Paying is where turns die

In full service, the end of a meal is frequently the slowest part of it: catching a server's eye, waiting for the bill, waiting for it to be taken away, waiting for it to come back. That sequence can add a substantial block to every single turn in the room.

Anything that collapses it — paying at the table, splitting without a trip to the till, settling from the guest's own phone — recovers time from a part of the meal nobody enjoys. This is the rare case where speeding something up improves the guest experience rather than degrading it.

Things that speed turns without rushing anyone

• ✓Greet and take a drink order fast. It shortens the turn and improves the experience simultaneously.
• ✓Settle at the table. The walk to the till and back is pure dead time.
• ✓Make table state visible. The host should see a table is free without walking the room.
• ✓Reset immediately rather than in batches. A cleared table that is not reset is not available.
• ✓Use seat numbers for larger parties. Splitting a bill at the end is far quicker when who ordered what was recorded at the start.
• ✓Match party size to table properly. Seating a two-top at a six costs you the difference for the whole turn.

Measure before you optimise

Turn time varies enormously by daypart, party size and section, and an average across all of them hides the case worth fixing. Look at your peak service, by party size, and compare sections — a single section turning slower than the rest is usually a layout or a staffing problem rather than a guest one.

What the system contributes

In Opero the floor plan, the book and the checks are one system: seating a party opens the check against that table with the covers recorded, so table state reflects reality rather than someone's memory of it. When a check settles, the table is visibly available to whoever is seating next.

Payment happens at the table on a supported card reader — one per location, bought from us — and QR ordering lets guests settle from their own phones where that suits the room, which removes the slowest segment of the turn without hurrying anybody.