Restaurants are a burst capacity problem. In a typical restaurant from 11ish to 1sh you have a burst of traffic then from 1ish to 5ish you have low to no traffic. Once the dinner crowd comes in you'll have another burst of traffic that can vary greatly per weekday (monday nights, low traffic - friday nights, high traffic). You run in to the problem were many employees (waiters) want a full time job but you can only afford a few of them.
In many food service types they've (as the parent stated) got rid of the waiters all together (increased unemployment) and only kept the staff that would need to be there regardless of traffic amount.
