By the end of our series, we’ve explored two distinct approaches to peak management: throughput maximization, where you absorb rushes head-on with kiosks, and demand smoothing, where you defuse peaks with mobile pre-ordering and meal order tablets. But what if your operation needs both? Many sites (think large campuses, multi-site hospitals, or mixed-use facilities) find that a well-designed hybrid strategy delivers the best of both worlds.

When your peak is predictable and unavoidable, you don’t just solve for speed, you engineer it. Palisades Tahoe, a high-altitude resort with over 70% of its food and beverage (F&B) revenue earned within a three-hour lunch window, offers a compelling model for peak management through strategic capacity deployment.

Every dining operator faces the same fundamental problem: a high percentage of daily sales happen in a short window. That creates a daily race to serve as many people as possible before the peak ends and the window closes. The question isn’t whether the surge will happen—it’s how you plan for it.

Walk into any corporate cafeteria, hospital dining hall, or university food court between 11:30 and 1:00, and you’ll witness the same phenomenon: a massive surge. Hundreds (or even thousands) of people converging on limited service points, trying to grab a meal in the brief confines of a lunch window.