We spend a lot of time in hospitality talking about wait times: measuring them, comparing them, coaching around them, and getting understandably anxious when they start creeping in the wrong direction. If you work in restaurants, hotels, or really any guest-facing environment, you don’t need anyone to explain why, because waiting is one of the quickest ways to sour an experience, and most of us have sat through enough meetings to know exactly where it falls on the list of priorities. It’s usually right below “labor costs” and right above “that thing we said we were going to fix last quarter.”
What fascinates me, though, is not that we care about the wait, because clearly we do, but how narrow that concern usually is. We tend to approach wait time as a speed problem, which means our attention goes straight to throughput, staffing, execution, and process. Those things matter, of course, and I am not arguing otherwise, but in focusing so heavily on shortening the wait, we often ignore a different and equally important question: what is actually happening to the guest during that time?
The experience inside the wait
That question came back to me after hearing Sarah Beckett from Intouch Insight present research at the New Orleans CHART conference showing that friendliness and engagement have a measurable impact on how guests experience service. Her talk focused on drive-thrus, but the implications of her talk went far beyond that setting. One of the more interesting ideas underneath the data was that people do not experience time in a strictly objective way. They judge it based on what is happening around them, which means a wait that feels smooth, acknowledged, and well-managed can register very differently from one that feels confusing, silent, or neglected, even when the actual number of minutes is identical.
Think about how often that dynamic shows up in ordinary ways. Carl places an order at a quick-service restaurant and steps aside to wait at pickup. The team is busy, orders are coming out, and names or numbers are being called, perhaps clearly and perhaps not. No one says anything directly to Carl, so he ends up standing there trying to read the room. He watches other bags come out, wonders whether one of them was supposed to be his, and eventually notices that other guests are receiving their food before he does, which introduces a new thought: was my order missed?
Nothing has necessarily gone wrong operationally, and the order may be in progress exactly as it should be. But because no one has helped Carl make sense of the wait, uncertainty fills the gap and makes the experience feel longer and more frustrating than it actually is. (Side note: Carl is a real person I know who this exact scenario just happened to…his order did end up getting missed…Carl was furious with a capital F…but in his case, the F coming out of his mouth was actually another word).
The same pattern shows up in other settings as well, whether it’s a guest waiting for a table, waiting for a server to return, or waiting for a check that seems to have disappeared into the void. And it can happen in hotels, too: a guest might arrive early and learn their room is not ready, which is not, in itself, a catastrophe, because most adults understand that rooms do not appear instantly. What happens next, however, makes a significant difference. If the front desk simply says, “It’s not ready yet,” and sends them off into a vague holding pattern, the wait starts to feel irritating almost immediately. If, on the other hand, the employee explains what is happening, gives a realistic timeframe, offers a place to store bags, and tells the guest how they will be updated, the experience of the wait feels far more structured and far less frustrating.
The gap we don’t train for
If the wait matters as much as we say it does, then it should probably show up more clearly in how we train. What happens during the wait is usually no one’s job, at least not in any clearly defined way. There is rarely a point where someone is told, “When a guest is standing here waiting, this moment is yours to manage,” so the focus stays on the tasks that move the transaction forward, and everything in between is left to individual instinct.
That becomes more noticeable when you compare it to how deliberately we handle other parts of the guest experience. We are very specific about greetings, deciding what should be said, how it should sound, and in some cases how quickly it needs to happen. Even something like suggestive selling usually comes with guidance around timing and phrasing, which means those moments tend to be handled more consistently from one employee to the next.
The wait, by contrast, is rarely defined with that same level of clarity. There is not always an agreed-upon expectation for who acknowledges the guest, what should be communicated, or how often someone should check in, which means it becomes highly situational (and “highly situational” is usually where consistency goes to die). One employee might handle it well, another might not, and both would be operating within what the organization has (or has not) made explicit.
That approach works sometimes, but it breaks down just as often. The team is busy, attention is directed toward the next order or the next task, and the guest who is waiting gradually fades into the background. Nothing has gone wrong in a technical sense, but no one is shaping the experience either, which leaves the guest to interpret what is happening on their own.
The result is that many waits feel long not because they are long, but because they are unclaimed. No one is giving them structure, and no one is helping the guest make sense of what is happening, which is something we notice immediately as guests but are less consistent about recognizing as hospitality trainers, managers, or executives.
If that is the case, then the change is not complicated, but it does need to be intentional. Leadership needs to decide what happens during the wait, who in their hotel or restaurant is responsible for it, and how that expectation shows up in training. Until that is defined, the wait will continue to be handled inconsistently, no matter how much attention we give to speed.
What the wait actually requires
Once that expectation is defined, the question becomes what happens in that moment.
At a basic level, the guest should not feel invisible. That starts with acknowledgment, which does not need to be elaborate or scripted, but does need to happen consistently so the guest knows they have been seen and that someone is aware they are waiting. That might be as simple as making eye contact and saying, “I promise we have not forgotten you,” before moving on to the next task.
The guest should also be given some sense of what is happening. That does not require a detailed explanation or a perfectly accurate time estimate, but it does require enough context that they are not left guessing. A quick, “Your chicken takes a bit longer to grill than our other menu items, but it will be ready in just another minute,” gives them something to anchor to, which is very different from standing there trying to piece it together on their own.
There should also be a sense of progress. Guests do not need constant updates or a narration of the cooking process, but they do need some indication that things are moving, whether that comes through communication, visible activity, or a quick update before they feel the need to ask for one. Even something like calling out, “Order 42 is coming up next,” or briefly checking in when the wait stretches a little longer than expected can shift how that time feels.
And finally, there should be some awareness of how long they has been waiting. If someone has been standing in the same place longer than expected, that should trigger a response, whether that is an update, a quick check-in, or simply an acknowledgment that things are still in motion. “Hey, I know that’s taken a little longer than it should, but we’re almost there,” does a lot more work than silence.
None of this is complicated, but none of it happens by accident. These moments only feel consistent when the expectations are clear and actually show up in how the team is trained.
The outcome improves
We already measure wait times with a fair amount of precision, so the opportunity is to apply that same level of clarity to what the guest experiences during the wait. That means deciding, in concrete terms, what should happen in that moment and making sure it shows up in how we train, coach, and reinforce the work. Not as a one-time conversation, but as a consistent expectation that is visible on the floor.
Because once that expectation is clear, the difference is not subtle. The wait feels shorter, the experience feels more controlled, and the guest is far less likely to leave wondering what just happened, and far less likely to write a scathing Yelp review.
And if that sounds like a small shift, it is. It is also one that shows up immediately, which is more than can be said for most of the things we spend time trying to fix.
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