Catfish Out of Water

Why does restaurant food take so long sometimes? I just did an article on How to Utilize Leftovers where I talked about how restaurants are constantly pre-preparing ingredients and even entire dishes. So, if you think that you're, "Not the kind of person who does leftovers?" You may sadly be mistaken because this is absolutely how restaurants do it.

And I realized that, as much as this is a food-making hack that can be handy to incorporate into home cooking? It might also give the impression that restaurant food shouldn't take quite as long as it does sometimes!

Regardless of how streamlines restaurants make it, there are certain things that bog down the time your restaurant food takes to get to you. And there are some tips and tricks to get your meals faster that will help out both you, your servers, and your cooks. Because making the process easier on everyone involved helps out... everyone.

This Article Is Merely Hypothetical & Informative

This article is based on my own experience having worked in the restaurant industry for 15 years. It in no way, shape, or form expresses individual customers or restaurants that I have worked for. I have done everything from FOH to BOH, dishwasher to delivery driver, prepper to bartender, cook to General Manager. And everything in between.

These are my personal opinions on the best ways to get service and have your order expedited as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's not reflective of the policies of any restaurant that I have been associated with.

If anything, this article is a humorous way for me to vent about the restaurant business and food ordering process. If anyone else in the food service industry finds this amusing or any restaurant connoisseurs find this helpful? Then, that alone is worthwhile.

So, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

1. Know What You're Going to Order When You Go To Order

This sounds like a given. After all, who calls into a restaurant not knowing what they're going to order?? But you wouldn't imagine the amount of people who call in for precisely this.

Do you have specials?

What sounds good today?

What do you mean the Italian restaurant doesn't serve top ramen??

These questions irk food service representatives. If you really must ask them, they are best held for dine-in. Having a server dedicated to personalizing the service is a perk that customers tip 20% for. When calling in, though? It's really not the phone attendant's job to tell customers what to eat.

It's incredibly time consuming when people call into a restaurant to make an order without actually having looked at the menu first. It makes the entire ordering process take longer and ordinarily leaves both the customer and the employee frustrated at the end. A cursory glance at the menu would answer the vast majority of queries.

The, "There are no stupid questions" and "The customer is always right" stances are absolutely not true in the restaurant industry. There are stupid questions. There are customers who are wrong. And squabbling over what is and isn't on the menu to the person who answers the phone and has absolutely no control over menu creation and prices? Is a waste of everyone's time.

It's also incredibly helpful to put someone else in charge of the kids, dogs, and TV during the phone call. We all understand juggling a million things at once. However, everyone knows how phones work. Talking to multiple people, pets, and/or televisions at once confuses the people on the other end of the line who cannot see that you've turned your attention elsewhere!

2. Order Food in Order of Operation

This is not something that I expect the average person to think about. Although sectioning off food orders helps immensely. There are some POS (point of sale) programs that will order tickets automatically. All of the apps will print in the appetizer line. All of the entrées will print on the entrée line. Et cetera.

However, restaurant equipment is incredibly expensive. A single module can cost thousands of dollars. Multiply that by the number of stations? And it's easily in the tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade.

This means that a lot of restaurants are functioning on archaic computer systems. Some restaurants still hand write tickets and others are working on programs that have been in place since the '80s. Largely because the big bucks are spent on $30,000 ovens and the living wage of dozens of employees. Restaurant overhead is astronomical. But that's an article for another day!

Regardless of the reason, the vast majority of restaurant tickets print in the order that they're ordered in. So, when all of the salads, appetizers, entrées, and desserts are jumbled together? The ticket will take more time to decipher.

Take This Hypothetical Pizza Order: Creating the Ticket

Try creating a ticket with this conversation:

No, no don't touch that! Can I get a large pizza? Stop chewing on the remote! And a caesar salad. What size does that come in? Someone get Mr. Fluffers! With chicken. I think that the game is on channel twelve. Yeah yeah, I won't forget the ranch. How much does ranch cost?? Steve, you're only getting 3! Because money doesn't grow on trees and you should just buy ranch!

Did I order the pizza yet? A large... what size is large? No, that's too small. How many pizzas do I need to feed 12 people? Wait, no, minus wings. What sauce did you want? They don't have spicy honey mustard. I don't know if it's organic. Are there peanuts in it? Bob, aren't you allergic to peanuts?? Or is that soy? I didn't forget the root beer! Oh wait, yes, a 2 liter of diet coke, too. Because if you get pizza, I get diet coke! No, no, it's streaming. Who has the login for ESPN?

No, I didn't forget your gluten free pizza, Sally. I know, you have celiac disease. She has celiac disease! She will die! Are you happy now? Oh, and a cookie. How many people want cookies? Fine, we'll get chocolate cake, too. And breadsticks. Do those come with cheese? Of course I want cheese. Who eats breadsticks without cheese.

It's going to take how long?? Who's paying for all of this? No, no let's split it on 3 cards. Where are my glasses? Well, someone had better find them or no one gets food! Is that a 4 or a 7? I know that it's starting, Rick. Maybe you should have been on time for once!

Read that back to me. No, that's wrong. You didn't put it in right. I'm not paying for that! Are there specials??

It almost shouldn't have to be said... but figuring out what you're ordering before you call will expedite things immensely. Because this happens quite regularly in the restaurant industry and it makes it incredibly difficult to make a ticket.

Take This Hypothetical Pizza Order: Reading the Ticket

I've color-coordinated this for simplicity's sake. But you can see how it gets a lot easier to decipher a ticket if you order all of the like items together. It happens more often than you think that something doesn't get made because it's lost in the chaos of the ticket.

Which ticket is easier to read when that entire ticket prints out:

Now, the average ticket might not be this length or quite this bad. However, some of them are. And, even smaller jumbled tickets can make the ordering process more complicated than it needs to be.

The easier a ticket is to read, the less time it's going to take to start making.

3. Avoid Unnecessary Modifiers

Online ordering can seem like the perfect solution to avoiding the hassle of ordering in person or on the phone. Although it can be easy to fall into certain pitfalls that may make the entire restaurant food ordering process take longer. One of the fastest ways to anger a cook is to add in a bunch of unnecessary modifiers. (And the last thing that you want to do is irk the people making your food!)

For starters, restaurant food tickets tend to print in a very large font. Even with the best eyesight, cooks need to be able to see tickets from a distance. They can't stand directly in front of tickets throughout the entire process. So, to make this easier, they're in big fonts.

This means, though, that when customers input special instructions? These take an enormous amount of time to print. And, as the entire kitchen staff turns to see what novel is printing... Not a single person is going to be happy about it.

Take This Hypothetical Pizza Order: Printing the Ticket

1 Large 16" Pizza - Cheese

Pepperoni

Sausage

Mushrooms

Onions

Green Peppers

Pineapple

Extra Cheese

Vegan Cheese

No Sauce

Pesto Sauce

Gluten Free

!!!!!********!!????? I HAVE CELIAC DISEASE. I WILL DIE IF ABSOLUTELY ANY GLUTEN GETS INTO MY ORDER AT ALL. WASH HANDS BEFORE MAKING. MAKE ON A SEPARATE LINE. USE A SEPARATE CUTTER. DO A HANDSTAND. RECITE THE ABC'S BACKWARDS. ALSO BOB HAS A CHEESE AND A PEANUT ALLERGY. SO, I WANT PESTO SAUCE MIXED TOGETHER WITH THE REGULAR SAUCE BUT ONLY IF THERE'S NO CHEESE OR NUTS IN THE PESTO. PLEASE AND THANK YOU. LOVE YOU. THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH :))))) ??????????????? ALSO IT'S THE EIGHTH HOUSE ON THE LEFT. THE PORCH LIGHT IS OUT. GO AROUND THE BACK. CALL 8 TIMES. FOR STEVE.

Modifying a ticket is entirely necessary sometimes. I myself have several food allergies. There are very few things that I can order off of the menu without modifying. So, I understand the need for this kind of thing.

Some online ordering systems also aren't as straightforward as we'd like them to be. So, double checking that everything is in can be beneficial. But there are a few tips to make this process easier for everyone involved.

Tips & Tricks for Modifying Restaurant Food Orders

For starters, don't write an entire paragraph. Use as few words as possible to convey your message. It's entirely possible to simply say: "Celiac Disease. Dairy Allergy. Peanut Allergy."

Don't treat cooks as if they've never seen this before. Allergies are a universal problem and food service workers encounter them all of the time. Don't insult their intelligence. There's no need to explain what celiac disease is or why it's important to you. Writing more may backfire and make your message get lost in the mass of text.

Read the menu first is also a good idea. Gluten free pizzas tend to only be available in one small size. That's why you can't find a button in the larger sizes.

Allergen information also tends to be prominently on the menu. If you still have questions, calling and asking tends to take less time and effort. Especially if a cook has to look at this and say that the pesto sauce has both cheese and nuts in it. It's a lot easier to ask an employee than it is to guess and make special requests with the hope that they can be accomodated.

A good rule of thumb is that, if it requires more than 5 words to say? It warrants a phone call to double check.

Don't put question marks after allergy statements. Why? Are you unsure? Is it a joke? Don't confuse and anger the people who make your food????????????

There's also typically a separate section for delivery instructions.

A Caveat for Food Allergies

Do not falsely claim to have food allergies.

I cannot stress this enough.

DO NOT FALSELY CLAIM TO HAVE FOOD ALLERGIES.

It makes it more difficult for those with legitimate allergies to be taken seriously.

This is because there are plenty of people who make a big deal about being **deathly** allergic to something that they are clearly not. Whether this is because they're on a diet, misinformed, or simply don't like something? Restaurants have a legal responsibility to inform the customer about potential allergens.

This means that, if you say that you have celiac disease, but are drinking a beer with gluten in it, eating french fries that have been deep fried in a vat of gluten-infested oil, and still claiming that you need your pizza remade because you forget to say that it needs to be cut with a gluten-free pizza cutter? We're not being facetious when we call you out. Restaurants are obligated to inform you of the gluten that you are actively currently already consuming.

That having been said, if you do legitimately have a serious enough allergy to write an entire paragraph about it? Do not order from that restaurant.

If you will legitimately go into anaphylactic shock when in contact with gluten? Pizza restaurants, particularly those that hand toss their own dough, are absolutely covered in glutinous flour. This is not to be mean. That is not dust on the top of the shelf. It's flour. Pizza cooks have to go outside and brush the flour out of their hair, off of their clothes, and scour it out from under their fingernails. Gluten is quite literally everywhere and it is legally irresponsible for restaurants to guarantee your safety.

4. Avoid the Apps: They Charge More & Take Longer to Fulfill

There has been an explosion in third party apps. As with most things, though, the further that you get away from the original source? The more expensive it's going to be. According to Forbes in 2020, this ranges from a 7-91% markup from the original restaurant food price (Forbes' Meal Delivery Apps Can Charge Markups As High As 91%). Not only are apps paying third party prices, but the same specials, discounts, and other deals that the restaurant does in order to cover these costs.

Many people also assume that online ordering is simpler than it is. It can be easy to assume that online tickets go into the same queue at the same time as all other orders. But third party apps have entirely separate ordering systems.

Third party app orders typically pop up on a tablet and then a restaurant employee has to manually input them. This may only take a couple of minutes if the restaurant isn't busy. However, dine-in and phone customers take priority because they're waiting in real time. This means that it can easily take more than half an hour for an order just to get put into the queue. Not to mention the time that it takes for another delivery driver to show up as well.

If anything goes wrong with the order? Restaurant employees also have 0 control over the third party app. Oftentimes, the only way to modify an order is to cancel it and start the entire process over again. More often than not, it takes less time, energy, and money to simply order through the restaurant.

5. Don't Show Up Early for Take-Out Orders

Restaurants are notorious for taking longer than expected. All of the wishful thinking showing up early "just in case" doesn't make the food ready faster.

Some restaurants will make these customers pace around the lobby. However, then the customer get in the way of other customers and staff as they leer at everyone wanting to know why their food isn't ready when it is in fact their own fault for being ridiculously early. This is incredibly obnoxious and everyone around just wants to get these types of customers out of the building.

So, early tickets oftentimes jump the queue. When a ticket get expedited, though, it makes everyone's order then take longer. Food service is a lot like traffic jams. If everything is running smoothly and then a wrench is thrown in? That one person slamming on the breaks has a ripple effect throughout the rest of the night.

Cooks oftentimes have to stop what they're doing to coordinate with all of the lines involved in making different dishes and all have to recalculate whether or not they can toss an early order in the middle. Sometimes there just isn't oven, stove, et cetera space and this isn't possible. Other times, cooks force it in and make do.

This means that, not only has there been a halt in production to figure this out, but everything else is pushed back because of it. Consequently, every order until that orders time slot will then be late because one person decided to show up early and throw a tantrum.

Restaurants give waiting times for a reason. Showing up early can cause everyone else's order to take longer. This inconveniences the customer, the staff, the cooks, and everyone else in line.