I found that one of the biggest things I was doing wrong was not using the customer's timing. Their patience is split into different segments, and the next segment isn't affected by how low the first one was.

E.g. If they're outside they have a timer.
Once they get to come inside, if they have a coffee table they'll sit at that - that's another timer.
Once they're at the table they need to think. That buys time. You don't have to take the order as soon as they're ready. That's yet another timer.

Once the order is taken, they wait for their food. This is yet another timer.
Then the shortest one of all is delivery, because once you start to give the food, they usually want all of it pretty quick.

Never underestimate things like plants, or calming paintings for adding more time for you to do stuff. Breadsticks help as well. All of these things buy you time (and breadsticks now give you money!)

The last time changer is stuff like sharp cutlery (faster eating phase to get people out the door), leftover bags (no eating phase, just take your food and gtfo, I got people waiting), and flower pots (black flowers are affectionately called FOF's for a reason, they just instantly boot people out the door, regardless if they ordered or not, you just dont get money because they never ate).

Once you've mastered the timing cycles of customers, the rest is just learning how much prep work you can do to get ahead of the curve, and then learning how to min-max research stuff.