Long wait to be seated and Long wait for food

Have you ever been to a restaurant and waited thirty minutes or more to be seated and then once you were seated it took another thirty minutes to get your food? Of course you have almost everyone who has ever dined out has. As a restaurant manager you always hear "We only ordered ............ how long dose it take to make" or "We ordered ...... it doesn't take that long to make it." What most people fail to realize when a restaurant is packed is that their order isn't the only order being made in the kitchen. It also depends on what is ordered to determine how fast it comes out. If you order a steak well done that is 1.5 inches thick your looking at a minimum of 15 to 18 minutes before it is done cooking then by the time the server delivers it your total wait time could be 20 minutes. It also depends on how many orders are in front of your order. For instance if there are 10 orders in front of your order it depends how efficient the cooks are on starting the checks as they come in. If they get behind on starting checks or have to run to get to much product this slows the whole process down. A good cook will start all the items on checks that take the longest to cook then the cook will focus on the first few checks to sell them in a timely fashion. Then once the check is sold it is up to the server to deliver the food as fast as possible. The biggest problem arises when you are short kitchen staff and the orders are coming in faster than you can start them and sell them. This is what causes the 30 to 45 minute wait for food in most instances. Another cause which is a big one is incompetent kitchen staff. One more cause of this which happens alot is running out of cooking space which is when your fryers are full, the grills are full, and you have no more cooking area to start incoming orders. So you can see there are alot more factors involved as to why your order is taking so long. This is probably why most people who work in the restaurant industry are more understanding when they go out to eat and their order is taking a long time.