r/restaurant

Random thought but feels like the restaurant industry still runs on a lot of stuff people complain about every day but somehow nobody changes. Could be staffing, food costs, delivery apps, tech tools, scheduling, whatever.

hi everyone. im not sure how to navigate this so I’m coming for advice. my husband and I recently opened up a coffee shop, and one of our hires is a student who has a learning disability.

my brother has severe autism, and my husbands niece also has a learning disability, so I do admit that it was partially an emotional decision on our part. however during our soft opening we realized that the way we thought the coffee shop was going to be ran (more a sit down style) was not going to work. So we are now trying to figure out where to place him. We’re thinking as our pastry boy(like give pastries to our customers) or our bus boy. for anyone who has worked with someone with a learning disability or owns a restaurant with hires like him, is this a good idea? he’s super sweet, but when we had him try the cash register, he couldn’t deal with the volume, and most questions people asked he couldn’t hear them as well (that day we learned he also is a little hard of hearing) we are also thinking maybe as a dishwasher so he doesn’t have to interact with customers.. is there any other position he could be in?

I have noticed a trend toward much brighter lighting in newer bars and restaurants. It's particularly striking in cocktail bars which were traditionally dim, warm, moody environments designed to feel romantic. Many newer places are painted bright white, with bright overhead lighting that reveals every flaw in faces and feels like an interrogation room. Is there an intention behind this change?

I seriously cannot stand this anymore. I’m a hostess and we’re usually slow and all other restaurants I’ve ever worked at will let you go if there’s NO ONE in the restaurant. Anyways, my shift starts at 10 am and I don’t really have a scheduled time to leave. They put it on the roster for like a general time to leave, but this isn’t the time I was told when I was hired. So, if it’s 5:30 and my cover is here and there’s not a damn thing to do shouldn’t they allow me to leave? Usually they’ll make me wait like an hour or 2 to go home even though my cover is here. I’m still getting paid sure, but having to just stand around and wait to go home is like torture to me. Any advice ?

I’ve never worked in a real kitchen (other than fast food when I was a teenager). But I’ve just landed a stage at a high-end restaurant. I love to cook and I’ve hosted multi-course dinner parties out of my apartment for 10-15 people, but I’m entirely self taught.

I’m doing this stage because I’m considering a career in the restaurant industry and I think this will be a good test. But I need some advice for how to succeed. Considering that I’ve never worked in a kitchen (and the chef knows that) will I be expected to bring any equipment with me? I own a few knives and some of the other basic stuff you would find in a knife roll.

Also I imagine I won’t be given any difficult tasks at first, but I have like a week or two before the stage, are there any techniques in particular I should try to dial in beforehand?

Any advice is welcome, I’m super new to this but have been cooking my whole life and I’m excited to see what it’s like behind the scenes of a nice restaurant.

I recently got hired for my second job in the restaurant industry (i’m pretty new) and i was informed by my coworkers today that no one takes breaks, and my manager will deny you breaks. I work in Ontario, Canada and due to the ontario’s workers rights we are entitled to a 30 minute break per 5 hours or two 15 minute breaks per 2.5 hours (they also mentioned this in our employee handbook) I understand that it gets really busy but my last job also got extremely busy and we all still got our breaks. I’m not expecting to get a break if we’re in a rush obviously, but like if i’m working 8,10 sometimes 12 hours i feel like i should be able to take a break at some point no? Oh also apparently my manager will still deduct an hours worth of pay because of breaks but not give you your breaks lol.

Saw a similair post and figured id share my stats here. I've tracked every Red Lobster serving shift I've worked over the last ~11 months. I'm a full-time mortgage loan officer during the week, so this has mostly been a Fri/Sat/Sun side hustle with occasional doubles and occasional weekday pickups.

I usually work around 8–12 shifts per month and typically make somewhere between about $1,200–$2,900/month depending on season, schedule, and doubles picked up.

For context: my location is a decently busy restaurant, but probably on the lower end of the volume spectrum for our market compared to the busiest Red Lobsters nearby. And yes, Never Ending Shrimp season is its own special kind of hell, high table times, low per-person checks, and guests who treat it like a competitive eating event. I've seen a man eat 14 rounds. He tipped 10%...

I do upsell and ask for appetizers/drinks/desserts, but I don't hard push people. The Cheddar Bay Biscuits basically sell themselves, so I focus my energy on cocktails, lobster upgrades, and getting people to add the lobster tail to literally anything. Most weekends I'm usually aiming to sell around $450–$750 depending on whether I double or not.

OVERALL STATS

128 shifts

871 hours worked

Gross pay: $22,640

Actual take-home: ~$19,700

Total sales: ~$127,500

Average tip %: 19.11%

Tip out: ~3% of sales

Effective take-home tip rate: 16.11%

Average hourly: ~$25.99 gross

Average shift pay: ~$177

Average shift length: ~6.8 hrs

Best shift:

New Year's Eve

$488 in 8 hours

(Important note: I removed that New Year's Eve shift from Wednesday averages because it massively skewed the data. Table 14 ordered two full lobster feasts and a $90 bottle of wine. It was a statistical anomaly and a personal highlight.)

Worst stretch:

Ever since Never Ending Shrimp started, three consecutive Saturdays. My sales tanked, my tip percentage held okay, but the sheer table time meant fewer turns and noticeably lighter shifts. Never Ending Shrimp giveth the volume and taketh away the check averages.

PAY BY DAY OF WEEK

Monday

9 shifts | 46.0 hours | $19.87/hr | $96 avg shift

Slowest day by far. Mostly older couples and solo diners using rewards points. Cheddar Bay Biscuit consumption per table is somehow highest on Mondays.

Tuesday

7 shifts | 34.0 hours | $21.94/hr | $110 avg shift

Marginal improvement. Date night crowd starts trickling in. Cocktail sales noticeably better than Monday.

Wednesday* (New Year's Eve removed)

6 shifts | 30.5 hours | $23.41/hr | $122 avg shift

Mid-week hump. Surprisingly solid when we ran Wednesday specials. The lobster bisque upsell hits disproportionately well mid-week for some reason.

Thursday

20 shifts | 115.0 hours | $24.28/hr | $136 avg shift

The underrated shift. Feels like a warm-up Friday. Business dinners and early weekend crowd. Alcohol sales are good.

Friday

22 shifts | 152.0 hours | $27.19/hr | $192 avg shift

Peak performance. Anniversary dinners, birthday parties, people who saved up to treat themselves to the Admiral's Feast. Friday pays real good.

Saturday

30 shifts | 241.0 hours | $28.47/hr | $224 avg shift

Best day overall. Highest average shift pay by a decent margin. The Never Ending Shrimp crowd does show up on Saturdays but gets diluted by higher-check tables. Long shifts, worth it.

Sunday

34 shifts | 252.5 hours | $24.09/hr | $174 avg shift

More shifts than any other day but lower average pay. Post-church crowds are large parties with kids, which tanks tip percentage. Never Ending Shrimp orders spike again on Sundays, its hell.

SECTION SIZE COMPARISON

10-seat section (typically a 2-top + 4-top + 4-top)

$25.60/hr | 17.94% avg tip | $169 avg shift

The 2-top is usually a couple on a date who over-orders wine and tips 25%. Love.

12-seat section (typically a 2-top + 4-top + 6-top)

$25.22/hr | 15.61% avg tip | $160 avg shift

The 6-top is a wildcard. Great when it's a birthday party that orders appetizers and cocktails. A nightmare when it's a family of six splitting one Never Ending Shrimp order between two people and asking for extra biscuits every four minutes.

14-seat section (typically two 4-tops + one 6-top)

$28.14/hr | 16.38% avg tip | $204 avg shift

Best earning section by a solid margin. Replacing the 2-top with another 4-top increased average shift earnings by about $44 and hourly by roughly $3/hr. The two 4-tops turn faster and tend to order more deliberately than big parties.

The jump from the 12-seat to 14-seat section was surprisingly large and honestly changed how I think about section requests. I actively try to get the 14-seat whenever it's available.

Some more fun stats;

CHEDDAR BAY BISCUITS

I started tracking biscuit refill requests mid-way through the year mostly as a joke, and it stopped being funny i ran some stats. The overall average is 4.1 refill requests per table, but that number masks a pretty wild distribution. The single most important stat I've collected in eleven months of serving is this: biscuit refill requests and tip percentage are negatively correlated. I ran the numbers because I didn't want to believe it. Every additional biscuit refill request is associated with roughly a 0.6% drop in tip percentage. The all-time record holder was a 4-top on a Sunday they also got Never Ending Shrimp who submitted 9 refill requests, consumed an estimated 36 individual biscuits across the table, tipped 11%, and then asked for a to-go box of biscuits on the way out. Speaking of...

NEVER ENDING SHRIMP:

The shrimps are a structural inefficiency that I have now quantified across countless shifts and hundreds of documented shrimp rounds. The average table time is 71 minutes versus 43 minutes for a standard table, a 65% inflation in seat occupancy that, when modeled against my average turnover rate, costs me roughly 0.4 additional tables per hour during peak periods. Average check per person drops from $52 to $38, a 27% decrease, while tip percentage falls from 20.2% to 13.8%.

MARGINAL RETURNS:

The relationship between shifts worked per month and monthly take-home is not linear, and once I had enough data points to model it, the curve became the most useful thing I've tracked. Plotting monthly earnings against shifts worked produces a function that increases at a decreasing rate, the classic shape of diminishing marginal returns. My first 8 shifts per month yield roughly $23.40 per marginal hour. Shifts 9 through 11 yield approximately $26.80 per marginal hour, the peak of the curve, where I'm hitting prime weekend slots without accumulating fatigue that affects performance. Beyond 12 shifts per month, the marginal hourly rate drops to around $21.10, almost certainly because additional shifts pull from lower-volume weekday slots. Taking the derivative of the earnings curve with respect to shifts worked, the inflection point sits at 10.4 shifts per month, the exact point where marginal earnings stop accelerating and begin decelerating. That number is now my scheduling target.

Tip percentage as a function of hours worked peaks in the 5.5 to 6.5 hour window and declines measurably past hour 7, but the variable that explains most of that decline isn't fatigue directly. Tables seated in the final 90 minutes of my shift show an average close time of 19.4 minutes versus 11.2 minutes for mid-shift tables, an 8.2 minute difference that I can only partially attribute to party size. The optimal exit, modeled across all my shift data, is somewhere around 6 hours 40 minutes. Every minute past that point returns less than the minute before it.

Curious how this compares to other Red Lobster locations. And if anyone else has survived Never Ending Shrimp with their sanity intact... I might just quit because of it.

Especially considering how Red Lobster and Darden Restaurants are the sole reason it exists.

Many people don't know, but Olive Garden was created by Red Lobster Chefs and opened with the help of General Mills (yes the cereal company) who was responsible for opening and expanding Olive Garden around the US and Canada, as well as Red Lobster expansions.

I worked at Red Lobster when it was owned by Darden, and then sold off. I find it annoying that Darden just throws away it's OG restaurant and the only restaurant Bill Darden created and loved, but keeps Olive Garden and all their other crappy chains. They let some shitty equity company take over and sell all their properties to make a deal happen, that should NEVER be allowed. Now Red Lobster owns 0 properties anymore and at one point it owned almost all their properties, most of which were bought by General Mills.

I just want to see Olive Garden fail too. When will they start closing down 100s of locations? Why does Olive Garden make fresh things and the same company was making Red Lobster cook bagged pasta and all that?

Could anyone help me out with few suggestions for Indian Fast-food restaurants
?

they just put up like 5 first watch restaurants in my city and i really want to get hired at one as it would be my first serving experience since they start hiring servers at 18 unlike many places they require 21+, i work in a super busy (400 covers in 4 hours) high end restaurant right now and have like 5 years of service industry experience in general. How should i go about securing the job or checking in on my app at least? because ik restaurant typically dont like for you to call, and i don’t wanna waltz in during a busy hour but i really really want the job

I’ve tracked every Texas Roadhouse serving shift I’ve worked over the last ~11 months. I’m a full-time insurance sales rep during the week, so this has mostly been a Fri/Sat/Sun side hustle with occasional doubles and occasional weekday pickups.

I usually work around 8–12 shifts per month and typically make somewhere between about $1,400–$3,100/month depending on season, schedule, and doubles picked up.

For context: my store is a decently busy location, but probably on the lower end of the volume spectrum for our market compared to the busiest Texas Roadhouses nearby.

I do upsell and ask for appetizers/drinks/desserts, but I don’t hard push people. Most weekends I’m usually aiming to sell around $500–$800 depending on whether I double or not.

OVERALL STATS

- 132 shifts
- 893 hours worked
- Gross pay: $23,391
- Actual take-home: ~$20,400
- Total sales: ~$132,000
- Average tip %: 19.43%
- Tip out: ~3% of sales
- Effective take-home tip rate: 16.43%
- Average hourly: ~$26.19 gross
- Average shift pay: ~$177
- Average shift length: ~6.8 hrs

Best shift:
- Christmas Eve
- $505 in 8 hours

(Important note: I removed that Christmas Eve shift from Wednesday averages because it massively skewed the data.)

PAY BY DAY OF WEEK

Monday
- 10 shifts
- 48.5 hours
- $20.19/hr
- $98 avg shift

Tuesday
- 7 shifts
- 35.5 hours
- $22.27/hr
- $113 avg shift

Wednesday* (Christmas Eve removed)
- 6 shifts
- 31.9 hours
- $23.75/hr
- $126 avg shift

Thursday
- 21 shifts
- 118.5 hours
- $24.55/hr
- $139 avg shift

Friday
- 21 shifts
- 149.8 hours
- $27.55/hr
- $197 avg shift

Saturday
- 31 shifts
- 246.7 hours
- $28.83/hr
- $229 avg shift

Sunday
- 35 shifts
- 255.1 hours
- $24.34/hr
- $177 avg shift

SECTION SIZE COMPARISON

10-seat section
(typically a 2-top + 4-top + 4-top)
- $25.85/hr
- 18.19% avg tip
- $172 avg shift

12-seat section
(typically a 2-top + 4-top + 6-top)
- $25.51/hr
- 15.82% avg tip
- $163 avg shift

14-seat section
(typically two 4-tops + one 6-top)
- $28.52/hr
- 16.62% avg tip
- $208 avg shift

The jump from the 12-seat to 14-seat section was surprisingly large. Replacing the 2-top with another 4-top increased average shift earnings by about $45 and hourly by roughly $3/hr.

I also tracked a lot of other variables:
- restaurant volume by shift
- sales trends
- party size trends
- guests per hour
- section turnover
- tip % by day
- sales/hour
- section performance
- seasonal differences
- doubles vs single shifts
- etc.

Curious how this compares to other Texas Roadhouse locations or other restaurant concepts.

Following up on yesterday's popular post — here are some more interesting statistics from my server data.

WHAT THE AVERAGE GUEST IS WORTH TO ME

- Average party size: 2.5 people
- Average check: $61.62
- Average tip received per table: $13.21
- Average spend per guest: $24.87
- Average tip per guest: $4.07

So statistically, the moment a table of 4 sits down in my section, I’ve already made about $16 before they even order.

BUSINESS METRICS ACROSS 132 SHIFTS

- Guests per hour: 5.83 avg / 8.57 max
- Sales per hour: $143.70 avg / $212.53 max
- Parties per hour: 2.14 avg / 3.72 max
- Effective tax withholding on tips: ~10.1%
- Only about 10.1% of my pay is withheld because not all cash tips are reported.

TOP 10 SHIFTS BY TOTAL PAY (tips + hourly)

1. - $
2. - $
3. - $
4. - $
5. - $
6. - $
7. - $
8. - $
9. - $

TOP 10 SHIFTS BY DOLLARS PER HOUR

ONE THING THAT STOOD OUT TO ME

Every shift in my top 10 total pay list is 9+ hours.

Every shift in my top 10 per-hour list is under 8 hours.

Christmas Eve is the only shift that appears on both lists.

The marathon shifts look impressive on paper, but the shorter, busier shifts are where I’m actually making my best hourly rate.

ON THE “NO TAX ON TIPS” BILL

Based on my data, with virtually all of my tip income shielded from federal taxes under the proposed no-tax-on-tips policy, I’d probably need to find a replacement job paying somewhere around $35–38/hr to match the same take-home pay I’m getting serving.

Most people don’t really run that math when they look down on restaurant work.

One other fun fact is i’ve been stiffed as many times as I’ve received a $100 tip. 4 times each. The tips came from a C list actor, a rich attorney who sued my dad 20 years ago, the parent of a kid i coached i. basketball, and random nice guy on christmas eve.

COMMON QUESTIONS I GET

“Yes, my base pay is $2.13/hr.”
That is already included in my gross total pay numbers.

“Why not go into fine dining?”
I’d like to eventually, but with my current setup — full-time 9–5 job plus coaching high school basketball — Texas Roadhouse works great because the schedule is flexible, the environment is pretty chill, and I can pick up or drop shifts pretty easily.

Hi, I'm looking to connect with restaurant workers/managers/owners who have experienced burnout on the job and would be willing to talk with me about it. I'm a journalist, and I'll be writing an article about it - I'd love to include your story. Happy to include more details if you reach out.

The restaurant I work at is struggling really badly right now. They tried to open a second location around Christmas- renovations and everything was much longer and more expensive than they anticipated and it was delayed. We’re still consistently busy at this location.

A bunch of our suppliers have cut us off so we’ve started new ones. Ok, maybe we don’t owe that much and we’ll catch up after the new place opens in June?

Recently our pay and tips have been delayed. This is what concerns me. I don’t want to be that story where I’m missing thousands of dollars because the place went bankrupt.

The owner is saying there’s money and it’s just tied up in the new open. That everything will be fine when it opens. I love working here and I don’t want to leave if they can come back from this… but it seems to be getting worse.

Has anybody seen success in a story like this? Or should I jump ship asap?