Understanding and managing your restaurant’s table turnover can be the difference between long waitlists with unhappy guests and repeat business that helps you thrive.
Table turnover is one of the most important metrics and analytics for restaurants.
Different F&B concepts will have different table turnover rates. The time of day and your location may also contribute to how long guests stay at your restaurant.
Read on to understand what table turnover is, why it matters, how to measure it, and how to improve it. We’ll also offer tips on how to maintain a positive guest experience.
What is table turnover?
Restaurant table turnover measures the time a group of guests occupies a table. The faster you turn tables, the higher the number of guests you serve, which means more revenue.
However, it’s important you don’t make guests feel unwelcome in a bid to increase your table turnover.
To improve your restaurant’s table turnover, you first need to calculate it.
How to calculate table turnover?
To calculate your restaurant’s table turnover rate, start by selecting a specific time period, such as a particular meal service or the hours when your restaurant is busiest. Then, divide the total number of guests served (covers) during that time by the number of tables that were occupied.
The equation would look like this:
Let’s look at an example.
If a restaurant has 50 seats and serves 300 guests in 10 hours, the table turnover rate would be: 300 guests divided by (50 seats x 10 hours) = 0.6
This means that each seat was used an average of 0.6 times during the 10-hour period.
Why is table turnover important in a restaurant?
Measuring your restaurant’s table turnover offers insights about your daily business operations. It can help you
Understand guests’ behavior
Uncover your busiest days
Optimize seating capacity (especially during peak seasons and peak hours)
Identify challenges for your in-house staff
Reduce waitlists
Improve guest experiences
Analyze weaknesses to make better decisions for your venue
Overall, understanding and analyzing your restaurant’s table turnover rate can help you improve decision-making for your front-of-house and back-of-house staff, menu options and pricing, shifts, restaurant tech stack, among other factors.
What is the average restaurant table turnover rate?
Calculating your average table turn rate without knowing industry standards means you have no reference point.
You should know different F&B concepts have different table turnover rates. Some concepts rely on guests spending time, while others like quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have a faster table turn rate.
In other words, a good table turnover rate for one restaurant may not be the same for another.
Remember, restaurants are about creating memorable dining experience. Having a quick turnover rate with a bad experience means guests won’t be coming back and your revenues will dwindle in the long term.
If your concept caters to large groups often, these are tables with many guests and large orders, and accordingly longer seating time.
Research shows the average table turnover rate for a family restaurant, between 5 pm and 10 pm, is 3. This means each seated table takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes from seating to paying the bill.
In fine dining restaurants, the average table turnover rate tends to be longer, lasting up to 2 hours per table. This may also vary if the concept offers some fixed-price menus with several courses.
Finally, the average table flip rate for a casual dining concept stands at 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Taking it too far or optimizing table turnover?
One high-end Dubai restaurant seems to have taken their restaurant table turnover to a new level. Whether guests appreciate it or not is yet to be determined.
Nobu in Dubai’s Atlantis, The Palm, informs guests beforehand of the time allotted to them and their reservation.
The restaurant offers time slots depending on the number of guests in a party or group.
For example, according to Gault & Miliau UAE, a table of one gets 1 hour and 45 minutes, while 2 to 4 guests get up to 2 hours. Groups of 5 to 7 guests get up to 2 hours and 30 minutes, and any groups of 8 or more “are welcome to stay beyond 3 hours.”
According to Nobu’s restaurant manager, guests are informed of these limitations “both verbally and by email.”
On busy nights, the Nobu hosts reiterate the time limit to guests “to keep them on course.” However, if the next checks in and their table has not yet been vacated, the restaurant manager offers guests the option to move to another table.
While not all restaurants may take table turnover that far, it’s worth considering how your turnover rate affects revenues and guest experiences.
How would guests feel if they made a booking only to come in and discover their table is being occupied by another group who are only halfway through their meal?
How to increase table turnover at a restaurant?
There are multiple strategies to enhance your restaurant's table turnover rate. You don't need to implement them all at once, as some approaches may complement each other or even streamline other aspects of your restaurant operations.
Use a reservation and table management system
One way to boost table turnover is to streamline operations, including reservations and table and seating management.
A restaurant reservation system, like Servme, allows you to efficiently handle bookings from multiple channels, including your website, phone, WhatsApp, and platforms like Reserve with Google.
Table management systems come with restaurant floor planning software enabling you to optimize your restaurant layout and seating arrangements. Servme, for instance, offers automated seating for large groups, which speeds up your table turn time.
With automated seating, you simply input the number of guests in a party, and the system recommends the best table combinations, ensuring faster seating. This efficiency allows guests to order, dine, and vacate the table more quickly, helping you maximize your restaurant’s capacity and boost overall efficiency.
Discover how Bla Bla Dubai Streamlines Seating for 650K Guests & Captures Real-time Guest Feedback with Servme
Make the most of your POS system
For the best results for your venue and for turning tables faster, use a restaurant point-of-sale (POS) system that’s compatible with your reservation system.
For one thing, the POS system can offer additional insights and reports. Combined with your reservation system, you get detailed POS reports, ensuring a better understanding of guest behavior.
Concepts using Servme and POS can get information like average guest spend, average check per table, among other metrics.
They can also use Servme’s auto-tagging feature to identify top spenders, frequent guests, VIP guests, among others.
At Servme, we’re constantly adding new POS partners to our list to help more restaurants make the most of their POS and table management systems.
Further reading: 7+ POS Systems for Restaurants & F&B Operators to Help Grow Business
Use Waitlist management software
Queue or waitlist management software helps you manage your waitlists. Many reservation systems, including Servme, come with waitlist management features so you can engage guests while they wait.
Whether you run special events on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, seasonal menus, or simply a small venue, you may need to use a waitlist.
Guests can join your online waitlist when making an online reservation via your website, Facebook and Instagram, or booking channels like Zomato and Tripadvisor.
You can also add walk-ins to your waitlist. Ask them for their name and cell phone number and their details early on to build your restaurant CRM.
Make sure you share your digital menu with waitlist guests so they can explore all options before they are seated. This will help them get in their order faster and improve your table turnover time.
Further reading: 11 Reasons Your Restaurant Needs Servme’s Reservation Widget
Give guests access to your digital menu beforehand
One way to increase your table turnover rate is to get guests to view your menu before they’re seated.
This will help guests decide what they want to eat faster. They can even decide early on if they want to have dessert or not.
You can do this by sharing your digital menu on your website, having a quick link on your social media accounts,…etc.
With online reservations, you can share a link to your digital menu using WhatsApp Business, SMS, or booking confirmation notifications.
Use bill-splitting options
One of the most common reasons for a slow table turnover, especially with group bookings, is when the bill arrives.
Guests bring out their calculators, each guest looks up their dish and beverage, splits the taxes and other items they may have shared with others…
It’s a hassle for guests and servers. It also prolongs the time taken to pay the bill and prepare the table for the next group of guests.
Bill-splitting, on the other hand, saves the staff time, relieves guests, and speeds up operations for all.
Further reading: 5 Ways to Secure Advance Revenue with Restaurant Deposits
Train your team to use your restaurant software
Part of turning tables faster is knowing that it’s an ongoing learning process. It involves some experimentation.
That’s why you need to train your team to use your restaurant management system and its features.
This will allow your team to take orders faster, make quicker decisions when needed, personalize the guest experience, and improve overall efficiency.
Make sure your team is familiar with the different features in the restaurant reservation system, which features are available to them, and so on.
If you’re using Servme, all servers get onboarded onto the software. When new features are released, your dedicated account manager provides training for restaurant staff on the new feature.
Don’t seat incomplete parties/groups
Guest experience management is important. However, one tip you may not have seen coming is this one. Don’t seat incomplete groups or parties.
Most guests like to wait for the rest of their group before they put in their order. No one wants to order only for their food to arrive and get cold while their friends get there.
However, this process means longer seating time, and a slower table turnover rate. It means guests are seated and take forever to order, which is bad for your restaurant and other guests.
To make sure guests don’t get upset while waiting, make sure you set expectations in your reservation policies. You can also share your menu with them while they wait. Use reservation policies to set expectations for dining durations during peak hours.
Further reading: Learn How to Create a Restaurant No-Show Policy [Templates Included]
Suggest foods that can be quickly prepared
When guests are wavering between two dishes, suggest the one that’s quicker to prepare in the kitchen. This will help servers serve dishes faster and guests can either order a dessert or pay their bill and leave.
This strategy is particularly useful during peak hours, when you want to turn tables faster.
Improve efficiency with shift management
Manage your team’s shifts based on your restaurant’s peak days and hours. You can get a clearer view of when your restaurant is full by reviewing reports in your reservation management system.
However, for most restaurants, Friday nights and weekends are considered peak days. That’s why it’s a good idea to have the majority of your hosts and servers available on those days, or other days where you have lots of reservations.
Further reading: Hyatt Regency Dubai Venues Boost Retention with 88,000 Guest Profiles using Servme
Consider a smaller menu
Many restaurants want to give their guests as many options as possible. While it may sound counterintuitive, the fewer options, the faster a guest will make a decision.
Research shows that presenting customers with fewer options reduces confusion and speeds up decision-making. When one group was presented with 24 varieties of gourmet jam, while another got only 6 varieties, 30% of the group with limited options made a purchase. On the other hand, only 3% of the group with the 24 jams completed a purchase!
As a restaurant, you don’t want to limit your menu items to only 6. But it’s worth considering a smaller menu over a larger one.
Similarly, dividing your menu and removing out-of-season items can trim your menu and speed up decision-making.
Further reading: Here’s All You Need to Know about Automated Restaurant Guest Surveys
Prepare some items in advance
Save time for your hosts, servers, and kitchen staff by preparing certain items ahead of time. We’re not talking about main courses or even beverages.
But prepping sauces and filling ramekins and bowls with sauces, garnishes, and dressings can save time for servers.
It allows them to place them on tables without having to prepare them every time a guest makes an order.
While you may not see this as a ‘super solution’ to increasing table turnover time, it helps to ensure servers aren’t fully worn out by the end of the day. Especially on busy days like weekends or during special events.
Other ideas can include filling water pitchers and preparing food or dessert toppings,…etc.
Keep dining experiences memorable
One thing to remember about restaurant table turnover times is that you want to create a memorable dining experience for your guests. It’s not just about flipping tables and getting to the next guests.
You want to use table turnover to your advantage without hurting the dining experience.
As you’ve seen with the above tips, many are about streamlining restaurant operations. Doing so helps your staff and ensures guests find tables faster, which improves retention.
Part of managing an F&B business is finding the balance between increasing restaurant sales and building loyalty.
Want to see how Servme can help you increase table turnover, elevate guest experiences, and boost retention? Book a personalized demo and try it yourself.
Mohammed Rafy
Operations
