If you’re trying to figure out when and how to market your restaurant, wouldn’t it be handy to know when and how diners are making restaurant reservations? A generation ago, when the process consisted of a host answering the phone and jotting down the reservation for 7:30 in the reservation book, there was little solid data to draw on from the restaurant itself, never mind from the whole industry.
But in today’s paperless era, of course, there’s nothing but data. And here comes Toast, the digital platform that serves ~99,000 US restaurant locations, with a Q3 Restaurant Trends report that includes up-to-the-minute insights about not only when diners book reservations, but how long after (or before) the reserved time they’re seated.
Seating arrangements: In Q3, the most popular time to place a reservation—not what time the reservation was for—was (drum dinner roll, please):
- 11% of reservations were placed from 4pm to 5pm, followed by from 5pm to 6pm (10%), and from 3pm to 4pm (9%).
As for when parties are seated, ~50% of diners were seated within five minutes of the rezzie, divided about equally between five minutes before or after.
Right this way: The most popular time for the reservations themselves was 6pm with 37%, 7pm (26%), and—“We’ve got to be home for Jeopardy!”—5pm, with 22%.
Will that be all? The Toast study also found that Americans—God bless ’em—were tipping at a rate that was just as generous in Q3 as the previous quarter, with tips to full-service restaurant employees averaging 19.4% of the check, and quick-service restaurants averaging 16.1%.
Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.