Rush hour

Sharad Raskar,owner of Siddharth Vegetarian Restaurant on Moledina Road,Camp,states that it is unavoidable to dodge the weekend rush. “So,we make it a point to tell our customers that they’d have to wait for some time for the table as we have no extended help in terms of extra waiters during weekends. We manage with only our daily help. But customers stick around and since this is a vegetarian restaurant,we mostly get customers constituting of good family crowd. Also,our readymade bhaji takeaways prove to be very popular,especially during the weekends,when people require them the most. So,in spite of a little inconvenience,the customers stay and as a result,our business during weekends is much more in percentage than on the weekdays.”

Like Siddharth,many other restaurants too don’t feel any particular need to hire extra waiters especially for the weekend to cope up with the increased numbers of customers. “We are under more pressure during the weekends but we don’t require any extra help as such. We just make it a point that none of our daily waiters or kitchen staff has their off-days on the weekends,” says a representative of a joint on Fergusson College Road.

As for preparing food well in advance and keeping in mind expectations of the intimidating weekend turnouts,he says it isn’t much of an issue. “We make calculations of what the crowd would be like on weekends and get a general idea of how much food we would need to be cooking and preparing. Most of our customers are regulars who know that their waiting time could extend up to 20 minutes on weekends as opposed to just five or ten minutes on the weekdays. But they are ready to wait out the extra ten minutes,” he adds.

Sometimes,the waiting period for customers may be more than 20 minutes. S S Salian,manager of Shivshakti Restaurant,opposite Balgandharva Rang Mandir explains,“Sometimes on weekends,the waiting period for our customers goes up from half an hour to an hour. But we make it a point to clarify this to the customers as soon as they arrive at the restaurant. We have extra help,with each waiter managing three tables. But the waiting time for customers can still not be helped and they understand our plight.”

So in the end,for restaurants to cope with the weekend rush,they require some compromise and loyalty from their regular patrons. And it seems that the latter are ready to spend some extra time waiting for their orders to be served. The situation was described perfectly by Rahul Bansal,a die-hard foodie,

“People are aware about the rush in popular joints on weekends. But since they make space in their busy schedules to go for an outing with friends and family,what is an extra 20-30 minutes spent waiting?”