Table turn tracking sheet for a restaurant: time each step from seat to reset, and find the slow one
Friday at 7:30 the host is quoting 40 minutes, half the dining room is eating dessert, and three tables have been sitting with empty plates for a while. Is the kitchen slow? Are checks going down late? Are clean tables sitting dirty for ten minutes because nobody's bussing? Everyone has a guess. A stopwatch and one sheet of paper will tell you which one it is.
This post gives you a timing sheet for the host stand, the formulas for turns and revenue per seat hour, a summary to fill in after a few services, a worked example, and what to change once you know where the minutes go.
The words, and the formulas
- Table time: from the moment a party sits to the moment the table is reset and ready for the next one.
- Turns: how many times a seat (or a table) is used in a service. Turns = covers seated ÷ seats. 120 covers on 40 seats is 3 turns.
- Revenue per available seat hour (RevPASH): sales in the period ÷ (seats × hours open in the period). It puts a slow lunch and a packed dinner on the same scale, and it shows when a short table time doesn't help because the room isn't full anyway.
- Seat use: seat hours used ÷ seat hours available. A four-top with two people in it for an hour uses 2 of its 4 seat hours.
None of these needs a benchmark from someone else's restaurant. The useful comparison is your Friday against your Friday, before and after a change.
The steps a table goes through
Step | Starts | Ends | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|---|
1. Greet | Party seated | Server's first visit | Server |
2. Order | First visit | Order in the POS | Server |
3. Kitchen | Order in | First food on the table | Kitchen, expo |
4. Meal | First food | Plates cleared after the last course | Guests (don't rush this one) |
5. Check | Plates cleared, or the guest asks | Check on the table | Server |
6. Pay | Check on the table | Payment done | Server, guest |
7. Leave | Payment done | Party leaves | Guests |
8. Reset | Party leaves | Table clean, set, ready | Busser, server |
9. Wait | Table ready | Next party seated | Host |
Steps 4 and 7 belong to the guest. The other seven are yours, and that's where minutes come back without anyone feeling hurried.
The timing sheet
One person at the host stand (or a manager walking the floor) writes the clock time at each step for a sample of tables. Ten to fifteen tables across a busy service is enough to see a pattern. Pick tables in different sections and of different sizes, and don't tell the servers which ones, or you'll time your best service, not your usual one.
Table timing sheet · [location] · [day, date] · [lunch / dinner] · timed by [name]
Table | Section | Party size | Seated | First visit | Order in | First food | Plates cleared | Check down | Paid | Left | Table ready | Next seated | Notes (dessert, large order, comp, problem) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[12] | [B] | [4] | [7:02] | ||||||||||
Covers seated this service (from the POS or host sheet): ………… · Seats: ………… · Turns: ………… · Sales: ………… · Hours open: …………
Times are clock times, so the minutes for each step are the difference between two columns. Do the subtraction afterwards, not during service.
The summary
After three or four services, put the average minutes per step in one table. Split it the two ways that usually matter: by daypart and by party size.
Table time summary · [location] · [dates sampled] · [number] tables
Step | Lunch, 2-tops | Lunch, 4+ | Dinner, 2-tops | Dinner, 4+ | Longest seen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Greet | ||||||
2. Order | ||||||
3. Kitchen | ||||||
4. Meal | ||||||
5. Check | ||||||
6. Pay | ||||||
7. Leave | ||||||
8. Reset | ||||||
9. Wait | ||||||
Table time |
Turns per service: [lunch ……] [dinner ……] · RevPASH: [lunch ……] [dinner ……]
Slowest step we control: ………………………… · What we'll change: ………………………… · Re-time on: [date]
A worked example
These are made-up numbers to show the arithmetic, not a target. A 40-seat restaurant times twelve dinner tables over two Fridays. The averages for four-tops come out like this: greet 4 minutes, order 9, kitchen 17, meal 38, check 11, pay 6, leave 4, reset 9, wait 3. Table time: 101 minutes.
The meal (38 minutes) and the guests leaving (4) are the guests' time. Of the rest, two steps stand out: the check takes 11 minutes from plates cleared to the check on the table, and reset takes 9. Getting those to 4 and 5 minutes cuts table time to 90 minutes without touching the meal.
What it's worth: Friday dinner runs 5:00 to 10:00, so 5 hours × 40 seats is 200 seat hours. Last Friday did $4,800 in dinner sales, a RevPASH of $24. At 101 minutes, a table first seated at 5:00 takes its next parties at 6:41 and 8:22, and a fourth would sit at 10:03, after close. At 90 minutes the fourth party sits at 9:30. If the host had a wait list all evening, that's one more seating per table that turns all night. If there was no wait list, it's worth nothing in sales, and only the guests' experience of a slow check matters. That's why you measure the wait before you push for speed.
What to change, by step
Slow step | Things to try |
|---|---|
Greet | Smaller sections at the peak (see our server section chart); the host tells the server when a table sits; a drink order taken by whoever passes first |
Order | Fewer pages on the menu; specials told at the greet, not after drinks; handhelds if the POS has them |
Kitchen | Fire times by course; a look at the slowest dish on the line; a station that's one person short at 7:30 |
Check | The check goes down when the plates are cleared and the guest says no to dessert, not when they ask; the server's last pass of a table includes "anything else?" |
Pay | Pay at the table if your POS does it; the card comes back inside two minutes |
Reset | A busser or the next server pre-busses during the meal; a reset kit at each station (setups, cloth, sanitizer); the host checks reset tables every few minutes |
Wait | The host sees the floor; tables are released to the host as soon as they're ready |
Two things not to do: drop the check before the guest is done, or clear plates while someone's still eating. Both shorten the table and lengthen the time before that guest comes back. Our post on the greeting, the wait and quoting times covers the host side, and reservations, deposits and walk-ins on a big day (coming Jan 26) shows how table time sets reservation slots.
Your table turn checklist
- [ ] Seats counted, by section
- [ ] Ten to fifteen tables timed on at least two busy services, different sections and sizes
- [ ] Minutes per step worked out after service
- [ ] Summary by daypart and party size
- [ ] Turns and RevPASH for each service
- [ ] Was there a wait? (If not, speed isn't the problem.)
- [ ] One step picked, one change made, a date to re-time
Where Mays fits
- Sales by the half hour. Insights → Labor Cost → Hourly Metrics has a Staffing vs Revenue Heatmap with a row for every half hour, coloured by labor % or by revenue, from your POS sales (admins by default). It shows which half hours of the week are worth a faster table and which aren't. See Labor cost insights.
- Open-to-close times from the POS. Mays keeps when each POS order was opened and closed (Square or Union), and Custom Reports can read both, so you can ask Mays AI for something like average minutes from open to close for orders placed between 5 and 9 p.m. on Fridays. If servers open the check when the table sits, that's close to table time minus the reset; if they open it at the order, it's shorter. Report dates are in UTC, so late-evening orders can land on the next day, and building a report uses AI credits. See Custom reports with AI.
- The forecast. The Forecast page projects each day's sales from the same weekday over the last 8 weeks, which is the number to multiply out when you work out seats, turns and RevPASH for next week. See Sales forecast and labor budget.
- The timing sheet as a form. A Table timing form under Tasks → Types with Repeatable rows (one row per table: Text for the table, Number for party size, Date / time set to Time only for each step) can go on a manager's checklist for the nights you sample. Formulas can't use fields inside repeatable rows, so the minutes are still worked out afterwards. See Building custom forms.
What Mays doesn't do: it doesn't know your tables, seats, party sizes or covers. There's no floor plan, waitlist or reservation book, so turns and seat use come from your own counts, and the order times are only as close to table time as your servers' habit of opening checks.
Time ten tables, not your gut, before you change the floor
Turning tables faster is mostly about the minutes guests don't notice: the wait for a check, a dirty table nobody's reset, a clean table the host hasn't seen. Time a sample, find the slowest step you control, change one thing, and time it again.
Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll look at your sales by the half hour with you.