I think the mechanism is supposed to be that you talk less, which in turn means you drink more.
Places serving food have piped music so you finish your meal more quickly so they sell more covers; you're unlikely to sit around chatting afterwards with music playing.
They also clear plates at the earliest chance providing an enhanced social pressure to finish.
My partner and I are 'mystery shoppers' for restaurants. We have our bill covered plus a bit extra on top (but have to fill out hefty, detailed questionnaires afterwards).
One of the things there's always a whole section on is timing: every single interaction has a time-window in which it must occur. You must be greeted within (t1), you must be seated within (t2). Plates must be cleared within (t3), you must have a 'table touch' (is everything ok with your food?) within (t4), etc.
Some discrete note-taking is often needed (descriptions of all serving staff are required too). We're pretty good at it by now, but have been 'rumbled' once. You can tell when it happens—suddenly you start getting offered the opportunity to try all the different wines they have, for free, given free desserts. Of course it doesn't matter as the meal is paid for, and often slows down the service!
I personally hate it when a waiter comes up, interrupts my meal, and asks if everything is OK with my food. Are you seriously saying restaurants are being encouraged to do this?
It has to do with the timing of it, like gp mentioned. Current best practice is that that waiter should come by within a couple minutes of the food arriving to top off water and make sure your first bites were as expected so that any problems can be fixed early in the meal.
This is much preferred to a manager only hearing about a problem after all the food has been eaten or the customer has sat staring at a plate with unsatisfactory food on it while their companions eat (making everyone less comfortable as generally humans don’t like to eat when others haven’t had the opportunity to).
My father believed that truly great restaurants don't do this, because they KNOW their food is perfect.
Practically speaking, though, dpeck is right... shortly after the food is dropped, the waiter should confirm the meal is to the customer's expectations. This is also the chance for customers to ask for condiments, get a replacement fork for the one they dropped, etc. Nothing worse than sitting in front of a hot meal you can't eat and being unable to get the waiter's attention.
More seriously, it all depends on the "level" of service, and - ultimately - on the ratio waiters/served people, which is usually between 1/6-1/10 (excellent service) and 1/25-1/30 (scarce or lacking service).
Yes, it's important to the restaurant to know if your meal is okay while there's still a chance to do something about it. It's also a chance to ask for anything else without a restaurant of people flagging down the wait staff.
Somehow other cultures (IME: China, many parts of Europe, Korea) do fine with people being expected to flag down wait staff when they want to talk to them.
As per the name, only one of those models actually interrupts your meal though. Quite often it's literally as I'm chewing the first bite. So by those metrics, the most irritating waiters would have the best times.
My pet hate is when I'm asked questions while I'm actually eating and I'm expected to answer with a mouth full of food.
I always dreamed of a restaurant that has call buttons on the table, like in a plane or hospital.
> My pet hate is when I'm asked questions while I'm actually eating and I'm expected to answer with a mouth full of food.
I definitely understand that this can be very annoying, but like I said, there are tradeoffs to both. Being a bit socially anxious myself, I prefer not to have to compete with the other diners for the server's attention, so the polling model is better for me.
as an aside, when I go to nicer restaurants I find that the servers tend to be more skilled/graceful. I don't know exactly how they do it, but they always seem to come by at the perfect moment to check whether the food is okay without interrupting a bite/conversation.
in theory, call buttons would be pretty nice, but I think some people would find it to cheapen the experience.
It generally seems odd to me, but at my job we used to go at lunch time to a place which didn't do this, and they would simply lose one person's order some of the time (i'd say 1 in 10). It's really annoying to be the one person whose food hasn't arrived yet wondering for ages if they are being slow or have forgotten. This extra touch gives them the opportunity to find out that they forgot something without completely pissing off the customer.
Places serving food have piped music so you finish your meal more quickly so they sell more covers; you're unlikely to sit around chatting afterwards with music playing.
They also clear plates at the earliest chance providing an enhanced social pressure to finish.