4.X — Table Turn Time #
Operators talk about table turns like it’s a feeling. “We turn pretty fast.” “We do about three turns on a Friday.” That’s not data. That’s a guess.
Table turn time is the measured interval from the moment a party is seated to the moment that table is cleaned, reset, and ready for the next Guest. Not when the check is paid — when the table is available again. Every minute in that gap is yield you either captured or lost.
The average matters less than the range. Your average turn might be 52 minutes. But if your range is 38 to 74 minutes, you don’t have a turn time — you have a consistency problem. The gap between your fastest turn and your slowest turn on the same night, in the same section, is your throughput volatility. Volatility kills RevPASH.
One discipline that reveals where the time goes: break the turn into its components. Seat to first contact. First contact to order. Order to first course. Last course to check drop. Check drop to table cleared. Each segment has a target. Each segment that runs long has a cause — and the cause almost never lives where you think it does.
The slow turn is rarely the kitchen. It’s the check that sat for nine minutes because the server was in the weeds. It’s the table that got seated before the previous party’s glasses were cleared. It’s the 12 minutes between last Guest leaving and next Guest sitting down because nobody owns the reset.
Name each segment. Measure each segment. The cause surfaces fast.
