“Your time is up, we’ll have to pick you up, unfortunately” – The phrase is heard right at the end of the two-hour time slot in the dinning restaurant, when the third glass of Pinot Noir joins the senses.
What can 120 minutes of an hour do for you when you have to meet your girlfriend in a few months and you want to share news, tastes, snacks and the joy that mutual coexistence offers.
Where does all this fit into an innovative, well-tuned, marketing approach code-named “time slot”.
The new era of timed reservations essentially began during the pandemic, when projected space distances and staff shortages created conditions that the average restaurant couldn’t cope with.
The reasons why this counterculture practice has persisted are simple: the limited time a group can spend at a table helps a restaurant sell more food to more people. It also makes it easier for staff to deliver a streamlined and predictable experience—and gently push latecomers out the door.
Big, leisurely dinners are fast becoming a thing of the past, and time – which melted and disappeared as people raised their glasses to say ‘cheers’ or ‘chin chins’ depending on the generation they belonged to – now looks like a terrifying beast. that all he wants is to devour everything he finds in front of him. Mainly the sweetness of intercourse.
Who can really feel peace and contentment over a cool ceviche while looking intently at their watch lest they spend a few more minutes than they should as if they have to meet some suffocating deadline, as if they have to complete and deliver a project ?
The experience became a transaction and the transaction became a routine.
Hospitality, the basic principle of restaurant culture is changing its sign and with it is changing the way we perceive some of our basic pleasures, such as food and drink.
This new fruit of internalized anxiety that overwhelms our being every time we sit around a restaurant table with small or large company, requires an extra effort of management and certainly takes us away from what is wanted – this, of absolute surrender to the feast of existence.
“We’re so sorry, we need your table” is the definition of passive aggressive. “Too bad”, as the female companion says, packing her bag with reluctance and some annoyance.
