Why Mother's Day is the most hated day in the restaurant industry

Channel 3000 News/CNN ^ | May 12, 2023 | Alexandra Peers

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Mother's Day is one of the busiest days for the American restaurant industry. It also has a reputation among waiters and restaurant staff as one of the most grueling days on the calendar.

"Every server knows that working on Mother's Day is hell. In fact, if I die and go to hell, I completely expect it to be Mother's Day. 365 days a year," wrote Darron Cardosa, in his book "The Bitchy Waiter: I'm Really Good at Pretending to Care."

What's so bad about it? From big groups that show up in waves ("most of us are here!"), to food-fussy kids and grandmas to splitting the check dramas and three-coffee-cup lingerers, restaurants hate this holiday. This year is expected to be particularly challenging as high inflation and rising menu prices give some restaurant-goers an extra sense of entitlement.

"The anticipation alone can make you anxious," said Joe Haley, an abstract artist who works as a server at a Quincy, Massachusetts, Italian-American restaurant. It gets "jam-packed. People are calling at the last minute for a reservation, there are other people who made multiple reservations so Mom could have her pick and they never cancel... people who take out their mother once a year tell you 'Nothing can go wrong!'" he said.

But it does. With big tables, a few late arrivals can kick the kitchen into chaos. "And every family has at least one black sheep or in-law who can't be relied upon to save their lives. Mother's Day: I dread it," Haley added.

Chefs, servers and owners said that this year guests have set their expectations high: Special occasion meals in a time of rising food prices. In a post-pandemic world, luxury -- or rather the appearance of luxury and excess -- is "in."

[1Old Pro]

Mother's Day is one of the busiest days for the American restaurant industry.

And restaurants hate it?? Because they make so much money? sheesh. If you don't want to work, don't. For me, I avoid restaurants on busy days like this and Valentines day because the kitchen quality goes down as well as service when they are slammed.

[Bob434]

LOL @yogi! He was a gem

[HamiltonJay]

“We don’t want to work if it gets busy. But we still want tips and you better tip more.”

I wouldn’t go that far. Worked in the service industry a long long time ago, and still have friends who do. There is a reason most places have a mandatory 18% or more tip on parties over a certain size, and smart ones also have policies about not allowing to split the bill if the party is over a certain size, and really smart ones, won’t seat a party until EVERYONE has arrived.

I don’t blame them. If I ran a restaurant I’d have the same policies. Large groups are painful to deal with. I absolutely have seen some outrageous thing from large groups in my day. I don’t blame some staff for having negative general opinions of such things.

[9YearLurker]

So the real issue is weak restaurant management, not tardy customers. (Though not allowing separate bills always seems snotty to me.)

[cyclotic]

I have a friend who once waited on Sean Hannity and a large group at a high end place in Long Island. Hannity is known as a 100% tipper. His tip equalized the $5000 bill.

That said, I’m sick of the tip everyone mentality. If all they do is hand me a bag of food, they are already earning their money. My tip is $0.00

[cyclotic]

My wife told me she wants to go out Sunday. Not necessarily for the commercial holiday, more because she doesn’t want to cook after church.

We’re considering less busy establishments.

[Wiser now]

Out of our four daughters, two live locally. Four of our grandchildren are adults with jobs.
Getting all of us together at the same time is nearly impossible, and that will only get worse. So...
We had dinner last night with one daughter and her children at her favorite restaurant, and Saturday night we will have dinner with her sister. No restaurants on Mother’s Day.
It’s the best we will ever be able to do. I never pictured my grandchildren as adults with jobs, drivers licenses and choosing a college that is 1000 miles away.

[Fiji Hill]

The people who visit? "They're drinking more. They want more carbs -- If it's mac and cheese, it has to be the cheesiest. But they want salads, and they want more veg sides, too. They just want more."

Seems they also want more noise. Nowadays, many restaurants blast music that is so loud that you have to shout to converse across the table. Quiet restaurants, for some reason, are becoming hard to find.

[HamiltonJay]

Nothing snotty about it, you have a party of 15 people and want to split the bill? Nope.

Its not worth it, it’s a waste of time and energy... As an owner of a restaurant I wouldn’t allow it, let alone the time and effort it adds to my staff.

Got 2 or 3 couples having dinner together and sharing a table, no problem, show up with 10 or 15 or 20 people, take up 2-3 tables and then want to split the check 17 ways to Sunday? nope. Not having my staff spend 20-30 minutes dealing with a group of folks trying to figure out how to split their bills, and arguing over, this wasn’t theirs, someone else ordered that, should be on their bill etc... Nope, 1 Bill.. you guys can figure out amongst yourselves how to pay it, not wasting my employees time on that nonsense. That time is better served serving other customers than making 10 trips to and from your table to split up your 1 check into the 17 slices you all now want.

1 Check, 18 or 20% mandatory gratuity and not seated until EVERYONE is present.

If that’s too much of a problem for your group, you are welcome to dine elsewhere.

[HamiltonJay]

Sunday night is dinner at grandmas....

EVERY Sunday, every week.

Whoever can make it makes it, whoever can’t, can’t.

Families that have this as their norm are the best and by the time Grandma passes away, the next generation usually has grandkids and the tradition continues with that side of the family and when the uncles and aunts and cousins etc can make it they show up to.

Lost by too many these days.

[gundog]

I’m sure there’s a large contingent of loud, entitled, non-tipping (wink, wink) folks in some areas.

[PortugeeJoe]

Call me crazy but when I was in my teens and early 20’s and waiting tables at an upscale Italian & American restaurant I loved working Mothers Days - and Easter and New Years and Thanksgiving. Yeah it was a long tough day but even back in the 1980-1988 when I did it, I would easily make $200+ in tips on those days. I remember one Easter I got a challenging party of 14 or 15 but got a $200 tip just from them.

Admittedly I did spend the day after those holidays vegging out at home. I always asked for the day after holidays off MONTHs in advance.

[Myrddin]

I worked for Pacific Telephone (later Pacific Bell and Pacific Telesis). As telco engineers, the network was engineered to handle the peak load on Mother's Day. The circuit paths through the switches were real physical paths. The switch was treated as a server with capacity measured in hundred call seconds where an hour has 3600 seconds, a load of 36 CCS was 100% in use. The goal was to have enough capacity to avoid hitting 36 CCS. Likewise, in less busy times of the year, the goal was to keep the capital investment of the switch at around 80% utilization to earn a good return on the equipment investment. 28.8 CCS is 80%.

Modern telco switches are digital with space-time-space or time-space-time strategies along with elastic buffers and bundling data traffic on higher speed digital serial lines (optical). Mother's Day is still a peak usage day, but building capacity is much easier compared to the days of crossbar switches.

[minnesota_bound]

FTA: Chef Art Smith, who has been personal chef to Oprah Winfrey and Jeb Bush.

What are the odds of these two having the same chef?
Can’t either do their own cooking?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Which is why it is the one day a year I will never go out. Mom is always hosted here and treated with one of my special bumpy cakes. It means I must love her because those things are a pain to make. :)

[xzins]

Fishing is a great way to spend any day.

[xzins]

Exactly!

[Myrddin]

I worked at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour in high school. Dishwasher, cook, fountain, waiter. The boss had a standard of delivery for the kitchen. 8 minutes from taking the order to delivery for the waiter to serve the customer. I had a few nightmare parties with orders for 120 #3 hamburgers. That's a 1/4 lb burger with cheese, grilled onions and bacon, 2 1/2 ounces of fries, garnish on the plate. Properly warmed, toasted bun surfaces, mayo, shredded lettuce, slice of tomato. My grill surface was 4 ft x 8 ft. 2 deep fat fryer for fries. It was a nightmare trying to get a pipeline of those burger plates out with the standard of surface expected by my boss. Some months later, I experienced the same size party as a waiter. OMG. Nobody lifted a finger to help until the last water glass was removed from a table by a busboy (who did nothing else to help the whole time). My boss forced me to share 50% of my $5 tip with that busboy. Crap weasel.

[Larry Lucido]

Exactly!

[Smittie]

We’ve pretty much stopped eating out at all. It’s no fun being gouged, yeah I understand their overhead increases, but it’s just not enjoyable anymore...