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

Between taking the order and the moment the plate hits the table, most places have ten to twenty minutes. On a quiet Tuesday, nobody notices. On a packed Saturday night, or at a table with two impatient kids, that quarter of an 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 into 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 who has something to do during those same ten minutes underestimates it.

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

There's something else at play too. Waiting at the start of a visit weighs more heavily than waiting in the middle. Someone who has just sat down has no reason yet to think everything will be fine; someone who has already had 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 having the order 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 genuinely has nothing to do.
3. Between clearing the main course and the bill. Commercially the most valuable moment, and at the same time the quietest.

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

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

Six approaches that work in practice

1. Something on the table that does something straight away

A dish of olives, a piece of bread, an amuse-bouche from the house. Small, cheap, and it turns the waiting moment into the start of the meal. It works mainly because it's a signal: someone is thinking of you.

2. A colouring page or puzzle booklet for kids

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

3. Table games via a QR code

The version without materials lying around. Each table gets its own QR code; the guest scans with their own phone and plays straight away in the browser, no app required. A round takes two to five minutes, exactly the length of the gap you want to fill. With TablePlay, guests can play alone, together on one phone, or take on another table in the venue. See all the games available.

4. Starting a conversation instead of asking a question

"Is everything to your liking?" always gets a "yes, fine" in response. "Have you been here before?" or "is this a special occasion?" gets a conversation going, and a conversation makes the wait feel shorter without costing anything.

5. Giving them something to look at

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

6. Being honest about the waiting time

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

It differs by type of venue

Restaurant with a kitchen that runs on time

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

Café where people stay seated for a long time

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

Venue with lots of families

The waiting time weighs heaviest here, because kids have a shorter attention span than the kitchen has speed. What matters here is variety: something that's still different after three times. See also what parents really look for in a restaurant.

Hotel or holiday park

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

What it delivers

Filling waiting time isn't an end in itself. It's about what happens afterwards:

• 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 about the food changing.
• Staff get some breathing room: less impatience at the table means fewer interruptions during the rush.
• Families are more likely to return to a venue where the kids had a good time.

How to know if it's working

It's tempting to judge this by gut feeling, and gut feeling is unreliable here: a busy evening always feels good. Four figures do tell you something, as long as you compare the same days of the week.

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 queue 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 isn't the right solution for you, and stopping costs you nothing further either.

What you're better off not doing

Two things keep coming up with venues that try it and then stop. The first is materials 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 table games cost for a venue your size, take a look at the pricing. For restaurants specifically, there's a separate page on how it works out for a restaurant.