NYC restaurants impose 90-minute time limits on diners: ‘Out of control’

[kkt]

Good thing I normally take-out and eat in the comforts of my own home.

Can someone please tell me the attraction of living in "The Big Apple"?

I can't think of anything attractive about living there full-time residence, but I'm sure it's nice city to visit (in the summer time of course).  New York certainly gets extremely cold outside their short summer window.

Spring or fall.  Too hot and humid in the summer.

[kalvado]

It can be a stressor, and it's possible to avoid by going to places in less demand where scheduling is more relaxed, or going at less common hours. Manhattan may be a bad place to take your sweet time...

Right, that's what I'm saying. They're welcome to have this rule as much as they want, but I'm not going to go there at all if they do.

Neither do I, honestly speaking. But those places still have enough demand without us.
Somewhat reminds me of Walmart discussions - everyone say "I am not going there at all!" - but once you're in the store, it looks like entire city is shopping there...

[JayhawkCO]

As a lot of you all know, I was a restaurant general manager for a long time. There were times when we'd be running long on reservations. Going over 5-10 minutes isn't the end of the world, but anything more substantial than that, I needed to take intervention. There were times where I needed one specific table to open up to alleviate all of my problems. When that happened, if it was a table that was finished with their meal and just visiting, I'd apologize, explain the situation, and offer to buy them a round of drinks if I could move them to another location. This never failed and got me out of a lot of jams, but it's not as easy as some are suggesting where you just ask people to leave because you need the table. I had to a) have another place to move them to and b) cost the company a little bit of cash by comping the drinks.

[kalvado]

As a lot of you all know, I was a restaurant general manager for a long time. There were times when we'd be running long on reservations. Going over 5-10 minutes isn't the end of the world, but anything more substantial than that, I needed to take intervention. There were times where I needed one specific table to open up to alleviate all of my problems. When that happened, if it was a table that was finished with their meal and just visiting, I'd apologize, explain the situation, and offer to buy them a round of drinks if I could move them to another location. This never failed and got me out of a lot of jams, but it's not as easy as some are suggesting where you just ask people to leave because you need the table. I had to a) have another place to move them to and b) cost the company a little bit of cash by comping the drinks.

How long were your reservation allocations, and what was the %% of reservations relative to overall capacity? Those are the factors which affect a lot
Sounds like those NYC places run close to 100% reserved...

[JayhawkCO]

As a lot of you all know, I was a restaurant general manager for a long time. There were times when we'd be running long on reservations. Going over 5-10 minutes isn't the end of the world, but anything more substantial than that, I needed to take intervention. There were times where I needed one specific table to open up to alleviate all of my problems. When that happened, if it was a table that was finished with their meal and just visiting, I'd apologize, explain the situation, and offer to buy them a round of drinks if I could move them to another location. This never failed and got me out of a lot of jams, but it's not as easy as some are suggesting where you just ask people to leave because you need the table. I had to a) have another place to move them to and b) cost the company a little bit of cash by comping the drinks.

How long were your reservation allocations, and what was the %% of reservations relative to overall capacity? Those are the factors which affect a lot
Sounds like those NYC places run close to 100% reserved...

I was basically 95% reservations. For obvious reasons, no reservations for the bar or patio (except during peak Covid reopening). We had two other tables in the main dining room that were walk-in only. We "allotted" 1h45m minutes for a 2-top (party of two), 2h for a 3 or 4-top, 2h30m for 5-6 top, 2h45m for 7+.

[JREwing78]

This reminds me of a classic Simpsons episode: