I would imagine that the restaurant considers it closer to a bug than a feature because its tables are finite. Parties that come in looking for a table aren't necessarily going to be queued up, most will just go somewhere else.

Precisely that! But apart from the inability to predict table occupancy (for which you could theoretically come up with some ML solution), the other issue is that from a strict economic sense, having people occupy a table for 3 hours vs 1 hour while paying the same amount of money is a singificant opportunity cost to the business. In essence, from the perspective of the restaurant, people who are having a 3-hour meal and a long conversation are using a resource for which they're not paying, while other potentially paying customers are being turned away.

A nice side effect of the tipping culture in the US is that this inefficiency is eliminated. That's why I find it hard to believe that businesses will find it in their best interest to eliminate tips.

>A nice side effect of the tipping culture in the US is that this inefficiency is eliminated.

What you consider an "inefficiency" is part of a lifestyle in big parts of Europe. Going out to eat isn't just considered "calorie intake" that needs to be "as quick and efficient as possible", it's considered leisure and social time, especially in the southern parts of Europe like Greece, Italy or Spain.

It's also very seldom that people really manage to just drink one bottle of wine in 3 hours, usually it's bigger groups and they tend to drink a lot once they finished eating. Depending on how the restaurant prices their drinks the "3 hour drinking group" can end up making way more money for the restaurant than trying to shove 3 parties of "Just eat something with a small soda", into the same timeframe.

Precisely this, if anything, it's part of the experience you pay for. His suggestions of using ML for occupancy and optimizing for turnover would more likely ruin the restaurant. Luckily in business schools being aware of cultural differences is being taught more and more.