If A Restaurant Server Doesn't Write Down Your Order, Should You Be Nervous Or Impressed?

Although there is no industry standard, folks in the culinary world have strong opinions.

As a pretty frequent restaurant patron in New York, I’ve recently noticed that more and more servers across all types of restaurants — from casual establishments to fancier ones — don’t write down my order when I’m selecting from the menu. Aside from wondering whether they’d actually get my order right, this also led me to ponder: Has this become an industry standard? Is there a rule book of sorts that restaurant workers follow? Does an eatery look better if its employees write down orders, or commit them to memory instead?

“There isn’t really an industry standard when it comes to writing down orders versus memorizing them,” said Rick Camac, the executive director of industry relations at the Institute of Culinary Education’s New York City campus. “Either way, servers need to track not only every order but the table and seat numbers as well.”

It follows, then, that jotting down the names of requested dishes in seat order may minimize the potential for error.

That said, folks in the industry seem to agree that memorizing orders is more common at relatively high-end restaurants than it is at casual ones.

“The higher the market segment, the more likely the orders will be memorized,” said Camac. “It is looked at as being more sophisticated to memorize orders in comparison to writing them down.”