" Some restaurants have learned to use reservations to slow the flow of customers to cope with congestion in the kitchen, much as kidney exchange networks figured out how to organize nonsimultaneous chains to avoid operating room congestion. Mid-priced restaurants handle dining room congestion with waiting lines, and fast-food restaurants are fast not only because they prepare the food continuously, but also because they reduce each customer’s transaction to a single encounter, at the cash register. "

― Alvin E. Roth , Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design