In the constant strive for perfection, clockwork service has become commonplace. Stretching beyond the once-typical diner-waiter relationship of taking orders and shuffling plates, some service teams today tend to march about dining rooms in formation to keep a constant eye on the customer¹. Arguably, this is derived from an inclination to slow down (negative) changes in a guest’s perception of a given meal experience. And, indeed, in never taking an eye off the customer, the status quo is preserved and risk is virtually eliminated.

But this tendency stems from beyond psychological inclinations. And the Zeno Effect, a quantum physics paradox, shows how.

Let’s pull back a few thousand years.

Meet Zeno, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who questioned the legitimacy of space, motion, and time². Among numerous other “paradoxes” he described, he proposed one key observation: when an arrow is shot and observed at a given instant, what is observed is a still, motionless arrow. Hence, motion cannot exist.

Today, given the idea of kinetic and potential energy plus the generally widespread trust in the existence of time, we see his arrow problem as less of a paradox. And we accept the existence of motion. However, his questions about the relationship between observations and time have since extended into modern physics³.

Think of an unstable atom (not emotionally, though I will get to particle “memory” later). For simplicity, it can decay in one particular way or continue existing as it was. When left unobserved, the atom is simultaneously decayed and left intact. However once observed, it has a given probability of ending up in either state.

Traditionally, one might expect that probability to remain constant throughout time. Yet a paper by researchers Misra and Sudarshan at the University of Texas at Austin in 1976 said otherwise, confirming the existence of a quantum Zeno Effect through a theoretical proof⁴. In brief, they showed that observing the atom after shorter and shorter periods, the probability the atom will decay reduced. 

Imagine a classy dining room with perhaps too much staff. Given their abundance of servers, they’ve made it a routine to walk laps about the room, watching each customer closely, attempting to stop perceptions of the meal from decaying. Naturally, a customer becoming impatient for their food takes time. And so, if we assume that waiter interaction resets the process of turning irritated, then the more often the team interacts with the customer, the chance of growing agitated is reduced. Keeping a constant eye on the customer–that is making observations infinitely often–therefore eliminates the chance the customer can become impatient.

To some degree, that’s the core idea of the Zeno Effect: by observing a quantum particle in infinitely short increments, we can effectively freeze the development of the particle. And since Misra and Sudarshan’s work, new experiments, some using ultracold gases and light rays, have confirmed the effect in practice⁵. 

But again, how does this apply to restaurants today?

Speaking broadly, in the shift to modern service, the hospitality industry has seen a mix of two main techniques: complete, organized routines, and a strive for human connections. The standard argument is that the optimal service type is a blend of both, able to come off as natural to the customer while still remaining professional and outwardly knowledgeable. Yet it’s almost canonical for a restaurant, at some point in its development, to bend into over-preparation, resulting in a stale, sometimes irritating customer experience.

Take an example from Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality for instance⁶. After months of tweeks to Eleven Madison Park’s menu and front-of-house procedures, he discusses sitting down for a meal to witness all the changes firsthand. Rather than enjoying all the finess built into the experience, he was left annoyed by how often his conversations were interrupted, be it by a water pour or the placing of new silverware. 

Beyond the often false necessity for such gestures, what underlies is an obsession with observing the customer. By placing trust in patrons’’ memories and their abilities to reset, much like particles and their “memories” might reset with each observation per the Zeno Effect, we expect to eliminate decay in the dinner experience. But as shown in practice, the effect only works properly on the quantum level, not extending to the idea of a watched pot never boiling or an eyed-down customer never switching moods.

In more detail, however, the idea of customer surveillance also fails on its assumption of there being a flat or upward-sloping trend of enjoyment throughout a given meal. Instead, we ought to acknowledge the inherent rollercoaster that is dinner, across various courses and mouthfuls, accepting uncertainty all the way⁷.

Still, this is in no way a complete denial of the Zeno Effect’s benefits in modern hospitality, nor a claim that its harms apply to every situation.  Consider a chef’s counter restaurant, where the customer-server dynamic is completely contrary to your typical spot, and where most expectations of privacy are dropped at the door. Or a borderline dystopian joint where excessive rehearsal is what customers come paying for.

The point is not to entangle ourselves too far in quantum physics principles when human desires and realities on the macro-level remain distant from individual particles.

1 – See this video by Varga 24 on Atelier Crenn for example: https://youtu.be/xvjFEDjNkkc?si=nkDPUByq5tj-10eZ 

2 – Intro to Zeno of Elea by Mark 09: https://www.worldhistory.org/Zeno_of_Elea/ 

3 – Introduction to the Zeno Effect: https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2019/12/05/the-quantum-zeno-effect-explained/ 

4 – 1976 paper on the quantum Zeno Effect: https://repository.ias.ac.in/51139/1/211-pub.pdf 

5 – 2015 paper which confirmed the Zeno Effect: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.140402 

6 – Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara:  https://www.unreasonablehospitality.com/ 

7 – Our last article on embracing uncertainty: https://thecnsr.org/impressionary-dining/