New School Analytics

We all know the scenario: you step into a restaurant just to find that all tables are full with customers happily eating their lunch. Now, if you could just know who long it will take until you can have your own table to sit down and have your lunch.

Usually you would look for some of the busy staff and ask the obnoxious question: “how long is the wait time for a table?” The answer you’ll receive will most likely be a very biased one that underestimates the actual wait time by, well, a lot. After all, who wants to loose customers through stating a very long waiting time for a table. As a staff person, you are much better off, giving a shorter waiting time, knowing that once a customer sits down and waits for a while, they are much more unlikely to get up and leave for another restaurant then when they first walked through the door.

A much better approach than asking the staff how long you have to wait is doing your own restaurant waiting time analysis. Read the rest of this entry »