Time allowed in restaurants these days

[Toots22]

AIBU

Went to a fairly nice cafe / restaurant for lunch today - 4 of us. The booking was for 90 minutes so I knew that up front. Place is busy, it’s a Saturday, I get it. But after paying £45 for my 13 year old and I for lunch, for a main and a drink each and then get pretty much kicked out the door before we’ve even finished our drinks, when we get the bill without asking and the server appears with the card machine immediately (there were empty tables). I know the cost of living etc is through the roof but is it unreasonable to be hacked off these days at the cost of things and the little time you’re allowed in a place for that price to just to enjoy your food and have a little bit of chat over lunch?

It was a cafe where the OP has said the most expensive thing was £14.99. The kind of place where because it is cheaper you are more likely to order a dessert, starters, sides.

Hospitality can't afford to tie up a table for the entire night where each person is spending £20 and nursing a glass of wine all night.

The industry is struggling with the high costs of food and energy. We either accept this or accept that places will close and we will have nowhere to go at all.

I do think some places are a bit ridiculous with getting you in & out quickly, but 90 minutes is fine I’d say.

DH & I went out for an anniversary meal a few weeks ago to a nice restaurant and we were massively rushed through. Our order was taken within 5 mins of arrival for 3 courses & drinks which is fine because we had looked at the menu online beforehand so already knew what we wanted but did feel a bit rushed, our drinks and starter arrived at the same time, our main meal was then brought out less than 10 minutes later as we were still eating our starter, and we ordered another drink while the waited was at the table, that drink and our dessert’s were brought to the table literally the second we stopped eating our main and the second we stopped eating our dessert they arrived with the card machine to pay. We were in & out, 3 course meal, in less than 45 mins which really was rushed and we won’t go back even though the food was actually really nice! But 90 mins isn’t a rush I wouldn’t say

I agree with you op. Going out for lunch (or dinner) for me is about socialising, not just wolfing it down and running. I try to avoid places with time limits. Recently a group of 4 of us booked a place for lunch - time limit was two hours, so reasonably acceptable. But in the end there were many free tables once the two hours were up, so they let us stay as long as we wanted, which was 4 hours. We did all have 3 courses, two bottles of wine between us and ordered coffees when we realised we had been sitting there for so long. We only meet every few months so the time flew!

45 minutes is ridiculous.

Exactly.

I recently went for a bottomless brunch at a cocktail bar where they booked us a 90 min slot then didn't bring us any drinks for the first 30 mins. We had to keep asking for them, it was clear they were understaffed and then at the end of the 90 mins they were telling us we had to leave. We did argue that actually we had only had 60 mins and barely eaten our food but they were so rude!!

Won't be going there again..

Do they do this everywhere in the uk now? Have never been to a place where they have a set time limit

Do they do this everywhere in the uk now?

No. Only in very popular and busy places.

Locally I know the places where if I want to spend 4 hours having lunch and a chat with my friends I can do no problem. Those are the places we return to.

Same.

What!!!! It takes you more than an hour to eat a single plate of food?

Depends on the restaurant. I went with friends for dinner the other week. 8 of us so we’d been asked to pre order food. It was 45 mins before we even got a drink and over an hour before the food arrived! If we’d had to leave after 90 mins we’d have had 20 mins to eat so certainly no time for coffee or pudding.

if we’d also had to wait t9 actually order it could easily have been 90 mins!

@StormingNorman

Mostly if people are meeting a friend for lunch then they don't want to leap up and be out of the door as soon as they've finished eating. 90 mins is fine if you are popping in somewhere as part of a day out with your own family but if I'm meeting friends somewhere I need a lot longer than that to catch up. A drink, chat and read the menu, order, eat main course, more drinks and chat, desert and coffee and more chat, maybe a second coffee!

There is a difference between this and taking four hours to work through one drink and a main.

In your case, the restaurant is making money the whole time. I suspect that in OP's case, the cost-per-hour for socialising kills the restaurant's bottom line.

There are too many people using cafes and restaurants as offices/clubs/meeting rooms and with rising costs they have to do something about that.

My worst experience of this was a restaurant in York. It took 30 minutes to take our order and then 45 minutes for the food to arrive. I assumed that since our food was so late that they would relax a bit about the 90 minutes, but no. After about 5 minutes, they arrived with the card reader and stood over us. When I pointed out that our food had only just arrived, she said that they had to allow at least 5 minute turnaround time. I asked if they had any take out boxes so that we could take the food home, but was told that there was no time for that. I just paid quickly and left, despite having barely started my food. Not because I was being a martyr, but because bolting my food down with a waitress standing over us on the verge of tears, plus hearing people in the queue getting more and more annoyed does not make for a relaxing experience. I would have asked for a refund, but the waitress was so visibly stressed it would have felt like kicking a puppy.However, I did not leave a tip, and left them a bad review on tripadvisor.

Ivy Asia. The smaller the table, the less time you get. As a table of two, we had 1hr 45 mins for their experience menu (many dishes!). They timed it all perfectly and we didn't feel rushed.

I have to say I did feel a bit indignant when I saw it on the email confirmation though.

@user1471516498 that is outrageous- I would write to the manager and demand a refund

@MrsTerryPratchett I agree about cafes and people ordering 1 coffee and sitting with laptops for an hour and a half!! Students in particular are bad for this

Nobody is saying they want to nurse a glass of wine all night. Absolutely nobody. But I do normally want dessert. And not to be rushed out the second I put my fork down. I usually go to the loo as well at some point. And I want to be able to look at the menu and spend a little bit of time to choose what I want.
And if places can't make it work budget wise without rushing people, they will close down. And deservedly so.

They should go to weatherspoons. Not only do they not care how long you are there, they give you a free coffee refill.

It's one of those things where there are so many variables it's hard to say what is reasonable. Totally dependent on the type of restaurant, the occasion and how much you want to order. To me 90 minutes is short for dinner. When I first saw time limits it was 2 hours. I went out for a casual one course lunch the other day and we took an hour and a half. We took a while ordering, then they were slow with the food, and then the baby needed changing.

The crucial thing though is that if restaurants want to enforce it they need to have the kitchen and the waiting staff able to make the timings work. I do have some sympathy because getting staff right now is hard and I know hospitality is struggling, but I've lost count of the number of times I've wondered if they want my money as I try to pay/order another drink etc. There comes a point where you wish you were at home because there it would be acceptable to serve yourself!

What is annoying when you are on a time constraint so you really do want to have eaten and gone before 1hr 30 and the service is soooooo slow you only manage a starter and have to hassle them to get the main but can't then have a dessert because they've been so slow.

I have no issue being told how long I have the table for but I do have an issue with service being so slow you can't eat the meal you want x

Presumably then you wouldn’t knowingly book a restaurant with a 90 minute cap? Which OP did.

I would have LOVED to have had the time to buy a second cup of coffee (in the same place, +/- cake) but there wasn’t time. I didn’t actually book the restaurant, but as I said, I knew the Ts&Cs but it doesn’t stop being annoying at paying all that money for a 90 minute ‘experience’

i would have been ill if I’d eaten three courses in 45 minutes!