Today is Valentine’s Day — one of the restaurant industry’s three busiest days of the year (Mothers’ Day and New Year’s Eve make up the rest). This is amateur hour. Most of the clientele on this day aren’t regular diners, and this is one of the special days out of the year they treat themselves to a nice date.
And restaurants take advantage of this: cramming every available table for two in every nook and cranny of the establishment. Creating tight turn times for tables, so couples can’t stay and linger over drinks and conversations lit by candlelight. After all, restaurants are businesses (something everyone forgets) and this is one of the days that needs to bring in some dough.
This is one of the reasons I don’t like Valentine’s Day. Besides all the usual corporate holiday arguments, it’s destroyed any concept I had for romance on this day. I’m that server who wants to make sure you drank, ate and paid within 1 hour and 45 minutes, otherwise the rest of the reservations are going to back up. Sorry, but I have other guests to wait on long after your meal is over.
That is not that dining experience I would want to have, but the demand for reservations on this day forces businesses to accommodate the influx of people in ways they normally wouldn’t practice. If you don’t book ‘em, you lose ‘em, and that’s the way business works.
So if you have someone special in your life, and you choose to celebrate Valentine’s Day, take them out to dinner on Feb. 15 for a romantic dinner instead. Don’t subject them to the madness the day before. This way you can have a quiet table at the time you want, enjoy your company, and have the evening you would want to have. If I'm your server, I’d be more than happy to make that happen for you too.
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