The Use of Acceptable Customer Waiting Times for Capacity Management in a Multistage Restaurant

This study took an integrated approach to restaurant capacity management by capturing major types of capacity and multiple stages of service and incorporating customers’ expectations. A simulation was used to measure the current restaurant’s performance in meeting the waiting time standards and to identify the threshold requirements of resources to meet the different levels of customer expectations of waiting times. The results showed that the current restaurant needed to adjust capacity levels to meet the customer service standards, and more than one combination of multiresource thresholds existed because the threshold level of each resource varied with the other types of resources.