Front of house wait

[IvorTangrean]

So for Christmas my wife and I got some gift cards to a restaurant chain that shares a name with the US state third from the top left.

And when we went we had a terrible experience and wanted to both vent and get opinions about it.

This particular restaurant is close to our house so this is not our first time visiting and it has a bar side and a dinning room side. Normally the bar is self seating and the dinning room is hostess seating. But this time both the bar and dining room required you to be lead to a table, which was fine.

The strange part that pissed off everyone and lead to 3-4 groups leaving that I noticed was the 10 total empty tables while the front reception area was standing room only. When asked the hostess said something about having to stagger seatings to not overwhelm the kitchen, which I get but people were jumping the line ( and seating themselves ) and leaving because of this.

Would it not have made more sense to seat people and just say it is going to be an extra 10 minutes for you food rather than have a crowded front of house and half empty seating area?

[otakuneko]

"Stagger the orders to not overwhelm the kitchen" doesn't make sense period. You can't tell how long someone or a group is going to take to order after being seated.

Seat them at once and overwhelm the waitress, yes--some will end up waiting longer to get their drinks. Kitchen, no. You could stagger the seating by ten minutes a piece and still might end up with multiple groups ordering at once.

[Krivak]

No, you cant seat people in the area because, whilst they all might say "Oh, i understand we cant order", most, if not all will not abide by it. Either because a waiter, seeing the table being sat, will come up and the people will order*, or the people will bitch at a manager at "being sat and no one has helped us, we want free stuff!"

And when i worked as a server, we've had other servers who have said "keep seating me" way past their limit of tables, then BOOM, weedtown. :/
*those servers will totally take a table that has no defined server. Each table potentially adds to their tip, regardless of if they can properly take care of them or not.

[fma_fanatic]

There's a more serious problem at hand if the kitchen can't keep up with the covers they get.

[April]

From experience as a hostess, I will say that if those tables were seated, they would NOT have been ok with the waiting for food. They would have complained and walked out just as much as if they were waiting in the lobby.

I'm wondering if the hostess mis-spoke and meant it would overwhelm the server, being sat multiple tables all at once.