After thinking about my last idea for a bit I came to a conclusion. While it would be useful and some places would be honest, there needs to be accountability or else many places will simply fudge the wait times as they do now.
There is a fairly straightforward solution, an iphone or google droid app.
When a restaurant quotes a wait time, the user boots the app and enters in the quoted time. The user then presses another button when they are finally seated. Based on GPS coordinates the phone will try to identify the restaurant and suggest the location, but if it is wrong the user can enter it in manually.
This information would be uploaded to a website and restaurants would be ranked by not only their actual wait time, but also their honesty.
There is also sorts of ways the information could be displayed for users. It could show break downs based on time and day. It could also rank the restaurant with the times normalized by different metrics.
If a particular restaurant is all ready in the database, the average wait and honesty score of a restaurant would come up when the user starts the app.
While it would still be possible for restaurants to manipulate the data, it would be much more difficult and they could not simply 'lie.'
The app could even support comments and reviews of places along with average price per person in order to be a complete solution.
If people used this app, less than honest restaurants might begin to see customers turning away from their door. This method of accountability could encourage honesty with wait times and allow the method I outlined the other day to work to its full potential.
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Have comments about my ideas? If you see something wrong with them, leave a comment. I'll try to comment back. If you have seen these ideas implemented/mentioned somewhere before, leave a comment. I like to think I am 'original' but that doesn't mean somebody has not beaten me to the punch. Finally, if you just have something to say, well comment that as well.