counter service vs. sit down service

ole'e · Newbie Joined: 23 Sep 2009 Posts: 89 Location: KC

wanted to see what peoples thought werer on counter service vs. sit down service. Ready? Discuss!
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ckone · Posted: Oct 15 2013 Post subject:

How nice a joint you want?

For Q I feel like counter service is the way it should be. I honestly cant even think of one that has waiters.

Table service adds labor and hassels IMHO.
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Mr Tony's BBQ · Posted: Oct 15 2013 Post subject:

To me, BBQ is counter only....We have only 2 bbq joints in my area [ I am a vendor who does roadside and festivals ] 1 is counter, one is table...the table side is yuppy food, reheated by executive chef's, very expensive, takes 20 min to get your food and will never see any more of my money [ tried it once]...the other is a dickeys [ hurl - tried it just to say I did ] ....I expect the dickey's will outlive the sit-down slow yuppy-q, but I've been wrong before....they have a high end bar to help wash down the yuppy-q.
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necron 99 · Posted: Oct 15 2013 Post subject:

Chain BBQ joints such as Smokey Bones and TJ Ribs have wait staff service.

It's unnecessary IMO.

Chain operators such as Rudy's and Big Daddy's have only counter service.

There are hybrid systems with counter ordering combined with table delivery and table service, something to consider.

Personally I prefer joints with counter service and self-serve condiments. JM2C
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bjbbq · Newbie Joined: 06 Sep 2013 Posts: 80

I have been to both many times and counter service is the way I prefer. I will be doing counter service in my BBQ place in addition to sit down service at the bar. The bartender will be a server for those who want to eat at the bar.

All in all, the best BBQ I have ever eaten has all been counter service:)

qfanatic01 · Posted: Oct 15 2013 Post subject:

We have counter ordering with food runners and baggers. We have two fryers and more sides than most, that doesn't allow for instantaneous service. Unfortunately with that and call ins coming off the same line we can get backed up, sometimes up to an hour. I get tired of crabby people when the kitchen is slammed. Good things come to those who wait! Thankfully our regulars get it, many of them are the call in orders which is 30% of our business. At peek times we can have one every 5 minutes, some of which were called in hours ahead to make sure they got their food when they wanted it. Many coming from up to an hour away. We have one takeout phone and we get people whining because they can't get through, we can't cook more orders than one counter person and one phone person can take. If I can move to or open another place I will set up a separate line for takeout at least on weekends and maybe limit sides. I also need to control labor. Hard part is, the reason we get backed up is people like the items that back things up. Our combo meals for 2-14 people sell a ton and take a bit to put together, along with that add a bunch of fries and fritters on too. Then times that by ten orders between ten easy orders and it backs up fast. We have free popcorn for folks to put in their faces while they wait. The hardest part is when you have 20 call in orders and there are 4 tables out in the dining room and the folks in the dining room can't understand why they have to wait their turn. I've been to successful places all over the country and folks have to wait at some point at everyone of them.

Now, add a wedding and two other parties going out the back door in that hour to boot. In June we have a grad party going out every half hour on weekends, 100 people average. We have the potential of doing 3 to 4 times more catering a day if we tried. The catering we do now is unsolicited. We have a menu on our site, that's it, nothing printed. I am thinking of looking for a couple motivated unemployed vets to build this up. I think they would make good building blocks to grow the potential. I just don't know if I can find someone that is willing to start at the beginning with huge potential. I can see several million in sales a year in pretty short order though. I see profit sharing as a motivator. I am also building a mobile unit, food truck, for scheduled events only.

I'm for counter service and a bigger kitchen. If your food is good you won't be able to keep up! When your this busy holding equipment will be your second most important tool.

Two facts, your meats are at their best right out of the smoker. Your going to need to hold it to serve it as needed. Balancing these two facts is one of the keys to success IMO.

The opposite is crappy food and the problem is you just wasted a lot of time and money.
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nskitts · Newbie Joined: 14 Jun 2011 Posts: 80 Location: Jackson, OH

At my joint we use counter service, aka fast casual, and have seemed to do well with it. First time visitors are a little confused sometimes but our register gal just gives them the 10 second education.

Sometimes, the business will show you how it wants to be ran, and that happened with us. By that, I mean when we first started I wanted to take orders AND serve at the counter but what evolved was that people are ordering at the counter, filling their drinks, and sitting down as we come out and bring their food to their table. This ramps the service up just a bit so that they don't quite feel like they are a fast food restaurant but you still have the advantage of no servers. And of course, you need someone trolling the floor and looking for tables to clean, people to chat with, drinks to refill, etc.
What you will find with my hybrid technique is that a person with get a sense of sit-down service with the speed of fast casual. By the time you would have gotten your order submitted with a waiter/waitress, you will have your food half eaten in a fast casual joint.
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Louie · Posted: Oct 18 2013 Post subject:

We have counter service and it does get backed up with phone in's etc, a peeve of mine are customers who can't make up their minds and bog down the line!! Wink

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necron 99 · Posted: Oct 18 2013 Post subject:

I like spots that have either laminated copies of the menu near the start of the ordering line, or paper copies of their menu near the start of the ordering line, to check out what's on the menu before I get to the point where I place my order, if there's a line.

Table ordering is another way to address this issue.
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Harry Nutczak · Posted: Oct 18 2013 Post subject:

we took a page from Culvers, order at the counter, the guests get a table number, and food delivered.

I am ready to dump that, go all counter service and just have bussers cleaning used tables due to lack of intelligence in our very shallow, highly polluted local labor pool
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MO Barbecue · Posted: Oct 19 2013 Post subject: Counter vs sit down

I do a hybrid approach, during lunch we do counter and regulars may come in and takea. Seat, so we'll wait on them. Evenings is just sit down service.

For the first year we did only counter service, we added sit down when we added full bar.. Why? Couple of reasons. First, you can get a lot better staff if they're making 75-100 a shift in tips vs 20-30 and they take their job a lot more serious if they're making 30/hr vs 15/hr. Second, we wanted to keep people in the restaurant longer, and get more chances to touch the customer to check quality, see if they need more drinks, up sell desert.

In wa we pay servers min regardless if they're just punching orders or actually waiting on the customers, I find it a better value from a labor dollar if I'm making em run around checking on tables and they get more job satisfaction when they make better tips. Win/win!

qfanatic01 · Posted: Oct 19 2013 Post subject:

We take orders at the counter then run the food out to them. I have been in the business for 35 years, both front and back. I previously owned a full service gourmet Italian restaurant for 10 years. I am a CIA graduate. My problem with wait service is that I have hard working people in the back of the house, usually harder working than the front staff and I can't afford to compensate the kitchen staff at the same take home as a waiter, thus creating a rift. I choose to avoid that conflict by sharing the smaller quantity of tips generated in the counter setting between all staff. To be honest I would much rather have everyone with the same base wages and pool. Problem with that of course is that there is no incentive to be a stellar server. I get that too.

This is BBQ and counter service keeps the labor expenses down thus keeping the menu prices down. In this economy folks will do without the pampering to save a buck on good food. Other thing mentioned was building a check. Your not selling 60 or 80 dollar bottles of wine. With lower alcohol levels it's hard to safely serve over 2 drinks. At my first place our check averages dropped significantly when the economy tanked the end of 2000 when everyone grabbed their wallet as we sorted out the presidential election. It took the economists a year to pin point the start, I saw it immediately, my regular customers kept coming in but changed their spending habits from a bottle of wine to a glass and from appetizer, dinner and dessert to dinner only. I am in the BBQ business because it is the right fit for our economy. You don't need to be an economist to see that this country has a long way to go before we recover the jobs lost over the past 4 decades to technology. When you replace 10 peoples jobs with computers and robots and one tech, you still have 9 unemployed or under employed people. Retail and restaurant jobs (service industry) are not paying the wages needed to have the comfortable life the post WW2 generation experienced. Food and dining out seem to be the most obtainable luxury in this economy. As humans we need something to make us feel good and dinner out seems to have prevailed. Sorry about the rant. I think you need to keep your quality high and your prices low to make it over the next 20 years. Panera and Chipotle are in the fastest growing segment, I believe. Casual Counter Service!
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bjbbq · Newbie Joined: 06 Sep 2013 Posts: 80

My restaurant will be counter service except the bar. The bartender will take their order. Not sure exactly how to pay my people and mange the tips though. I will have to come up with a plan. I also like the idea of being able to pay prep cooks a nice wage because they will be making all the scratch cooked food that needs to be very high quality.

My personal experience will sometimes steer me to a place that has counter service in order to save the 15 to 20 minutes that getting seated, ordering drinks and them placing an order takes. The extra few bucks for a tip does not matter to me, but the savings of time is huge especially on a weeknight or lunch time.

MO Barbecue · Posted: Oct 20 2013 Post subject: Tips

Definitely check with your state and see what you can legally so with tips. In WA state it's illegal for us to do anything with tips - they are the sole property of the person receiving the tip, and any mandatory sharing is illegal. We also don't get any tip credit against min wage, which makes it hard to provide our kitchen with any real wage increase over FOH staff. Wa has the highest min wage in the country at 9.19 and it goes up annually.