Red Lobster..not enough servers??

[Grassgreen]

Get this....

I take my wife and 3 kids (all under 7) out for dinner last night, and we wanted to hit the one Red Lobster in Saskatoon. As a parent of young kids, I both respect other diners, and also want some fast service, so we usually head out really early...last night (Saturday) we arrive at RL at 4:45 pm.

The lobby is packed, the lounge is overflowing and the line is out the door! I finally get to the hostess area, and I am told that my wait woud be approx one hour to 90 minutes. Forget it. But as an ex-employee of that company (not in Saskatoon mind you), I tell them to forget it, but wander off to the washroom to see how busy they really are.

Just like I knew it would happen, I counted 14 (!!!) empty tables...I don't mean in need of a bus and reset, I mean just plain empty. I couldn't see the whole restaurant, but I would guess that there would have been 20+ tables like this.

When i went back to the hostess, I asked her why it would be an hour and a half, and why all these people were waiting for service, when the restaurant was actually half empty. her response was that they didn't have enough servers working, so they couldn't seat people~ is that the stupidest thing you ever heard? Myself and who knows how many others left without spending a nickel because they didn't have enough servers to handle the crowd. What a total joke.

Ended up next door at East Side Marios (not as good, but we were fed).

I think I should call their head office, I mean , that GM is costing his company big $$ and is a pain in the ass of the potential customers.

[SoGood]

Get this....

I take my wife and 3 kids (all under 7) out for dinner last night, and we wanted to hit the one Red Lobster in Saskatoon. As a parent of young kids, I both respect other diners, and also want some fast service, so we usually head out really early...last night (Saturday) we arrive at RL at 4:45 pm.

The lobby is packed, the lounge is overflowing and the line is out the door! I finally get to the hostess area, and I am told that my wait woud be approx one hour to 90 minutes. Forget it. But as an ex-employee of that company (not in Saskatoon mind you), I tell them to forget it, but wander off to the washroom to see how busy they really are.

Just like I knew it would happen, I counted 14 (!!!) empty tables...I don't mean in need of a bus and reset, I mean just plain empty. I couldn't see the whole restaurant, but I would guess that there would have been 20+ tables like this.

When i went back to the hostess, I asked her why it would be an hour and a half, and why all these people were waiting for service, when the restaurant was actually half empty. her response was that they didn't have enough servers working, so they couldn't seat people~ is that the stupidest thing you ever heard? Myself and who knows how many others left without spending a nickel because they didn't have enough servers to handle the crowd. What a total joke.

Ended up next door at East Side Marios (not as good, but we were fed).

I think I should call their head office, I mean , that GM is costing his company big $$ and is a pain in the ass of the potential customers.

customers should have been sat down if there were no reservations and empty tables.

its kinda strange how they cannot have enough servers at that time, maybe they really were short staffed or like a group of people just quit on them.
still should have sat the customers down, and have the hostess explain that service might be a bit slow due to lack of staff

[george benjamin]

Solution:

Get the customers seated in the empty seats.

Tell the cooks/servers to work diligently/quickly on appetizers.

That way people will be seated, they will get their appetizers quickly, but will wait for a while till they get there main course meal.

That is better then waiting a long time for everything.

[UrbanPoet]

I doubt the restaurant manager schedules people that way. IF s/he does... then they'd be the worst restaurant manager ever!

What day was it on? Maybe on that day all the staff decided to call in sick or not show up to work.

[Grassgreen]

I doubt the restaurant manager schedules people that way. IF s/he does... then they'd be the worst restaurant manager ever!

What day was it on? Maybe on that day all the staff decided to call in sick or not show up to work.

Granted it was a Saturday, but 4:45 pm?? I used to work at a Red Lobster long ago, and they do actually schedule this way...it is because they never anticipate being busy before 5, therefore they figure the can save big on labor by not having anyone working until they are going to all be very productive..and they don't take reservations either.

I could tell you lots of stories about RL

[B0000rt]

Red Lobster needs more cooks. They ALWAYS take FOREVER to bring out the food.

[Havo]

I don't find them too bad. Better than pickle barrel where servers seem non existent.

[pintobean]

Having worked in a restaurant before I can tell you that this looks like a classic case of the restaurant being short-staffed and having gotten busy earlier than expected.

At my restaurant, we would only start getting busy after 5:00, so we would have 2 servers start at 4:30, then 4 more servers would start at 5:00 and 4 more servers started at 6:00. On a few occassions, we had a major rush come in at 3:30 and we would get slammed, but it was never enough to permanently adjust the starting times since in the long run we would have lost too much money in labour costs paying servers to sit around from 3:30 to 5:00 waiting for the restaurant to get busy.

And to all those people saying that the manager should have filled the empty tables instead of making people wait...I can guarantee you that you're thinking about this incorrectly. Put simply, the manager was ridiculously short-staffed and was therefore only left with two options:

1. Instead of seating people at the empty tables, he let them leave - this only cost him some lost sales.

2. Instead of letting people leave, he could have sat them at the empty tables; they would then have to sit and wait approximately 20 minutes to be greeted by a waiter, another 20 minutes for their drinks to be delivered, 30 minutes for their apps to arrive and then another 40 minutes for their entrees to come...in the end, most people would have been so mad at the long food wait times that they would have refused to pay for all or part of their meals - the manager would then be forced to comp all or part of their bills - this would then cost him lost sales and a bunch of lost food.

As a result it is pretty obivous that seating people at empty tables when the restaurant is short-staffed is a BAD IDEA...it costs less to simply let the customers leave. Believe me on this.

[thegazelle]

Piggybacking on what some others have said, another solution may have been to not sit people down and then explain the long wait, but give people the option of being seated and waiting longer, explaining the situation. At the very least, people can make their own choices based on the situation presented to them, rather than waiting aimlessly, while being kept in the dark about the real reason. If I were there and were told that they were short waiters, but if I liked, I could take a seat and wait, I can either say no, I don't want to wait and leave, and not be extremely upset, or take my seat and wait longer and not be extremely upset. If I waited for 40 minutes only to find out that there are empty tables and that the real reason is because there are a lack of servers, I would have been extremely upset. Better to know that initially and then I can make a good choice.

That being said, the Red Lobsters that I have gone to are always JAM PACKED at dinnertime on the weekends, as well as Friday night. Sometimes the waits are like, 1hr. 20 minutes. The last time I tried to go, I drove my wife, son, and brother there and we were told about 1 hour wait (and this was at 8:15PM on a Friday night). I really like the food at Red Lobster, but the wait time definitely leaves a lot to be desired.