Entertaining guests while they wait: how to do it in your restaurant

Between taking the order and the moment the plate hits the table, most establishments have ten to twenty minutes. On a quiet Tuesday, nobody notices. On a busy Saturday night, or at a table with two impatient kids, that quarter hour determines how the rest of the evening feels.

The annoying thing is that as a business owner, you can do little about it. The kitchen doesn't work faster just because it's busy. What you do have control over is what a guest has to do during that time. And in practice, that makes more difference than the waiting time itself.

Why waiting feels longer than it is

Research on queues consistently finds the same thing: unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time. Someone waiting ten minutes with nothing to do consistently overestimates that time. Someone with something to do during those same ten minutes estimates it as shorter than it was.

For a restaurant, that means something practical. You don't need to shorten the wait time to make it feel shorter. You just need to fill it.

There's another factor at play. Waiting at the start of a visit weighs heavier than waiting in the middle. Someone who just sat down has no reason yet to think it'll be fine; someone who's already finished a starter waits with confidence. That's exactly why an amuse-bouche or a piece of bread is so effective: it's not the food that helps, it's the signal that something is happening.

The three moments where it goes wrong

In practice, almost every complaint about waiting comes from one of these three:

1. Between sitting down and the order being taken. The shortest gap, but it weighs the heaviest, because this is where the guest forms their first impression.
2. Between ordering and the first dish. The longest gap and the only one where the guest truly has nothing to do.
3. Between clearing the main course and the bill. Commercially the most valuable moment, and also the quietest.

The second gap is what this article is about, but keep the third one in mind: that's where money is made or not. More on that in the article about revenue per table.

The first impression of a visit often lies more in the first ten minutes than in the first plate.

Six methods that work in practice

1. Something on the table that does something immediately

A small bowl of olives, a piece of bread, an amuse-bouche from the house. Small, inexpensive, and it turns the waiting moment into the start of the meal. It works mainly because it's a signal: you are being thought of.

2. A colouring page or puzzle booklet for kids

The classic, and for good reason. Everyone who does this knows the downside: pencils go missing, paper ends up on the floor afterwards, and you have to keep restocking it. Expect five to ten minutes of attention per child.

3. Tabletop games via a QR code

The version without scattered material. Each table gets its own QR code; the guest scans with their own phone and plays directly in the browser, no app needed. A round takes two to five minutes, exactly the length of the gap you want to fill. With TablePlay, guests can play solo, together on one phone, or take on another table in the establishment. See all the games available.

4. Starting a conversation instead of asking a question

"Everything to your liking?" always gets a "yes, thanks." "Have you been here before?" or "is this a special occasion?" gets a conversation going, and a conversation shortens the wait without costing anything.

5. Showing something

An open kitchen, a wood-fired oven, a display case with today's fish. Someone with something to look at doesn't get bored. This is the most expensive of the six solutions, but also the only one that works permanently.

6. Being honest about the wait time

"It'll take about twenty minutes today" does more than you'd think. Uncertainty about how long something will take weighs heavier than the duration itself. A guest who knows what to expect waits more calmly.

It differs depending on the type of establishment

Restaurant with a kitchen that runs on time

Here, the wait time is predictable: ten to twenty minutes, every evening. This is the easiest situation to fill, because you know exactly how much time you need to bridge. Choose something that can be completed within that time, so it isn't interrupted halfway through by the food arriving.

Café where people linger

At a café, it's not about a gap between two courses but about the evening itself. Here, something repeatable with a competitive element works well. Table versus table or a regular quiz night fits better than a short puzzle.

Establishment with many families

The wait time is felt most heavily here, because kids have a shorter attention span than the kitchen has speed. What matters here is variety: something that's still different after the third time. See also what parents really look for in a restaurant.

Hotel or holiday park

Guests here often stay for several evenings in a row, and that changes the requirement: what's fun on night one still needs to work on night three. Repetition is the pitfall. See the page for hotels.

What it delivers

Filling wait time isn't a goal in itself. It's about what happens afterward:

• Guests stay seated longer, and those who stay longer are more likely to order something else.
• The rating of the visit goes up without anything changing about the food.
• Staff get breathing room: less impatience at the table means fewer interruptions during rush hour.
• Families are more likely to return to a place where the kids had fun.

How to know if it's working

It's tempting to judge this by feel, and feel is unreliable here: a busy evening always feels good. Four numbers do say something, provided you compare the same days of the week to each other.

1. The average spend per table, broken down by day of the week.
2. The proportion of tables that order something else after the main course.
3. The average time a table is occupied. Longer is good here, as long as you don't have a line at the door.
4. The number of reviews per week and what's mentioned in them.

Two weeks is enough to see something. If nothing moves, it's not the right solution for you, and it costs you nothing further to stop.

What you'd better avoid

Two things keep coming up with establishments that try it and then stop. The first is material you have to maintain yourself: game boxes with missing pieces, broken pencils, cards that are no longer complete. The second is something that takes too long. A forty-minute board game doesn't fit in a fifteen-minute gap.

Keep it under five minutes, and make sure you don't have to set anything up yourself.

Where to start

Choose one thing and do it consistently, rather than three things half-heartedly. If it doesn't work, you'll know within two weeks. If it does work, you'll notice it in the orders after the main course and in what guests write in their reviews.

If you want to see what tabletop games cost for an establishment of your size, check the pricing. For restaurants specifically, there's a dedicated page on how it plays out for a restaurant.