CAM-499

Eight minutes uncleared, and guests are waiting for a table

Turnover in the dining room. One table is half cleared, the previous service still on it. Another is being reset right now. At the back, two tables are already laid and free, and on the left a table is occupied with service under way. Four states coexist in the same room, and from the door you cannot tell them apart at a glance.

CAM-499 · RESTAURANT FLOOR · TABLE PENDING 8 min

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

table waiting to be cleared
service being cleared away
table being reset
table being laid
table laid and free
table occupied

What this camera measures

An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.

2Tables waiting to be cleared
4Tables laid and free
5Tables occupied
8 minLongest a table has gone uncleared
14 min+6 minAverage time between guests
14:12Time of the alert

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

a table has gone more than five minutes uncleared and people are waiting for a table at the door

Then

alert the floor manager with the table and how long it has been like that
save the image of the room with the state of every table
leave that table’s turnaround time in the service report

The instruction that set it up«Tell me if a table has gone more than five minutes uncleared while people are waiting for a seat.»

What changes

What changes for the manager and the front desk

A table that takes twenty minutes to be laid again is a cover that never gets sold. Nobody writes it down: you find out when you cash up, when there is nothing left to do about it. IRIS says which table is free, which is waiting to be cleared, which is ready and which is occupied, and how long it has been that way. With that, the floor manager seats people sooner, knows what to promise at the door, and the restaurant does one more sitting without adding a single table.

What people usually ask

How does IRIS know what state a table is in?

From what is on it and who is sitting at it. A table with used plates and nobody there is waiting to be cleared; one with the cloth, the glassware and nobody there is laid and free; one with people sitting is occupied. You mark once where each table sits in the image, and from then on the state reads itself, minute by minute.

Is this a way of monitoring the waiting staff?

No. The alert goes to the table, not to the person. IRIS says a table has gone eight minutes uncleared; it does not say whose job it was, or how long anyone takes, and it does not recognise any member of staff. A service jams for many reasons, and hardly ever because someone is slow: the kitchen, a group getting up all at once, two tables asking for the bill in the same minute.

Does this work on a terrace, or only indoors?

It works wherever a camera can see the tables, and a terrace is one of the places it works best because the whole floor is visible at once. What we do not do is go where we shouldn’t: guest rooms, bathrooms and changing rooms are outside IRIS. Dining room, terrace, bar and back of house, yes.

Other cameras