Hospitality glossary · Service and operations
Table turn time is how long a table is occupied by one party, from being seated to being ready for the next booking, and it sets how many covers a room can physically do in a service.
In practice
Definitions are easy. What matters is how the thing behaves in a real operation, and where it tends to go wrong.
Measure it from seating to reset, not from ordering to the bill, because clearing and resetting is part of the cycle and is usually where the time goes. A relaxed dining room might run two hours, a bar dining operation ninety minutes, a fast counter service far less. The useful version of the number is per session rather than per day: a Friday second sitting behaves nothing like a quiet Wednesday.
Compressing the booking slots without changing anything else. If the kitchen, the section sizes and the reset routine stay as they are, a shorter slot simply produces late tables, a queue at the door and a review complaining about being rushed. Turn time is an outcome of how the service runs, not a target you can set on its own.
Questions
Something here that doesn’t match what you’re seeing in your own business? That is usually worth a conversation rather than another article.
Table turn time is how long a table is occupied by one party, from being seated to being ready for the next booking, and it sets how many covers a room can physically do in a service. Measure it from seating to reset, not from ordering to the bill, because clearing and resetting is part of the cycle and is usually where the time goes. A relaxed dining room might run two hours, a bar dining operation ninety minutes, a fast counter service far less. The useful version of the number is per session rather than per day: a Friday second sitting behaves nothing like a quiet Wednesday.
Compressing the booking slots without changing anything else. If the kitchen, the section sizes and the reset routine stay as they are, a shorter slot simply produces late tables, a queue at the door and a review complaining about being rushed. Turn time is an outcome of how the service runs, not a target you can set on its own.
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