Subtly boost table turnover with faster-paced background music.

Did you know that if you take a bunch of metronomes, set them at different tempos, and place them on a slightly wobbly platform (like a plank set on two soda cans), they’ll eventually synchronize? It’s pretty cool to watch, here’s a video:

It’s a nice demonstration of the phenomenon called entrainment: when two or more things with their own natural rhythms eventually sync up, purely through being close enough to influence each other. Humans entrain to each other all the time. For example, when you walk next to someone, you naturally align the rhythm of your steps to theirs. Or when you walk past a car blaring it’s radio, it’s hard not to adjust your steps to march in rhythm, right?

If music can manipulate the speed of our stride, can it also shape our larger rhythms? Like how quickly we work, or run, or eat, or talk? For example, take background music in a restaurant. Can its pace influence how quickly you eat your meal and wrap up your conversation?

To find out, researchers tested different tempos of background music on patrons at an Italian restaurant in Tel Aviv. Over seven months, they collected data from 282 tables, including how long people sat at their table, how much they spent, and how much they tipped their waiters. Each night, patrons heard either fast background music (over 94 beats per minute), slow background music (less than 72 beats per minute), or the usual restaurant playlist. The fast and slow playlists were pulled from that same usual rotation, just filtered by tempo.

Tempo significantly impacted how long patrons stayed in the restaurant. On average, those who heard slow music stayed 80.3 minutes, those who heard normal music stayed 69.22 minutes, and those who heard fast music stayed only 57.29 minutes. Interestingly, despite this difference in lingering duration, the bill and tip amounts remained largely unchanged across conditions. Each group spent an average of around 204 ILS and tipped around 14%.

The results suggest that it may be possible to influence how long people stay in a restaurant or cafe by adjusting the pace of the background music. Therefore, it could be a good idea to change the background music tempo depending on your goal. If it’s too crowded and you need to turn tables over faster, pick up the tempo. If it’s slow and you want people to linger, slow it down. What makes it a low-risk strategy is that the study found no impact of tempo on the amount people spent or tipped. So it purely influences the pace of patrons, not their spending.

Malcman, M., Azar, O. H., Shavit, T., & Rosenboim, M. (2024). How does background music affect dining duration, tips and bill amounts in restaurants? A field experiment. Behavioral Sciences, 14(12), 1188.

background music, in-store audio, restaurant, entrainment, tempo, table turnover, dining duration, sensory marketing, sonic branding, atmospherics, hospitality, sound design, field experiment, consumer behavior, BPM