If manager or owner hoses the servers and doesn't staff appropriately then they aren't going to be able to "ask if everything is ok throuought the meal at appropriate times" and it wouldn't be their fault. Nobody can do the impossible. It's like personally blaming the cashier when the line is long.

I'd also start it earlier with training. If someone isn't trained for the job they are doing and never get any feedback from management, is it really their fault if they do it wrong? (I say this as someone who worked somewhere where training was more or less "yeah, go figure it out" so I have a lot of empathy)

I wrote on HN a while ago about my experience waiting (at least) a half hour to pick up a site-to-store order at Walmart when there was literary no customers. I never personally blamed the staff for it though because I could see the dysfunction in the system they were given to work with (and I could see the physical discomfort the staff was in dealing with it).