Managing the Flow of the Host Stand
Published By
Mike Sorrentino
Published On
December 2023
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“A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.” David Ogilvy
Every shift has a flow of its own, once you get on wait it is essential to flip tables as fast as possible. Allowing too many tables to get up and not get sat will create a detrimental wave to the kitchen. The only way to accomplish this is for the whole team to work as one, from the managers all the way to the bussers.
One up, One down are words to live by in this situation. It is imperative as one table gets up, it gets cleaned, reset and sat again as quickly as possible. That flow will keep the whole team on an even keel. A smooth shift is one where no one area gets impacted. If you allow too many tables to get up and then you sit them all at once it'll create a bubble. You can literally follow the bubble throughout the restaurant. For example it will start at the host stand. Guests waiting will see a bunch of tables and get angry and push back at the host stand and the bussers will be overwhelmed. They will then react by seating every single table to get the hangry guests in the foyer as quickly as possible. Next once all the tables are sat the servers will be overwhelmed. Any good server who is double or triple sat will take all the tables orders at once. Now that they have all the orders they will be a POS for a minute ringing in all the orders. Then the bubble will move to the kitchen. The Fry station and/or any station in the kitchen that is heavy on app items will get hit first. Then the rest of the kitchen will be impacted. Next the Expo and food runners will be very busy. Then a low will develop until a bunch of tables get up and the cycle will repeat.
The good news is you can recover for the first wave. If you simply go to one up and one down you can avoid the crushing repeat of each wave of each turn. If there is no leadership front the management or a solid lead host/hostess it can turn into a very long and frustrating night. Sometimes the first wave is inevitable but the key is to recover and stay consistent with not seating too many tables at one time. Sometimes it might be beneficial to stagger seating if possible. Some would say that you are losing sales that way but the kitchen staff Proficiency needs to be considered. If you have a weak kitchen, staggering the seating if you end up with a lot of open tables can save you lots of money in comps and angry customers.
Training your hosts on the importance of one up, one down and working with the bussers on cleaning and flipping tables as fast as possible would be the first step. The FOH manager plays a key role. First by keeping an eye on the amount of open tables during a wait any also be ready to step in and help the host keep the flow correct. Some have high tech systems like updatedable floor plans on iPads or radio transmitters to keep the floor plan the host uses up today while some just use the hosts who just sat a table come back up with the table numbers that are ready to be sat. Whether you have the means for a high tech or you use a low tech solution the key is speed. I can not reiterate the importance of one up and one down!