How to Pick Up a Waitress (Same Day or Later)

They’re attractive, they’re flirty (especially if you’re in a tipping country), and they’re already talking to you: every guy wants to know how to pick up his waitress, right?

The challenge of course is that she’s in a hurry… she’s on the job… oh, and also, she might just be being polite.

After all, she meets a lot of male customers every day.

She can’t go out with ALL of them!

So how do you court a waitress properly, in the limited time you have with her?

How do you tell if she’s actually receptive to you, rather than just playing a role?

And if you can court her, and she IS receptive… how do you pick a waitress up?

 

First off, there’s the first impression you make.

A lot rides on that, due to how little time you’ll get with most waitresses.

Elements that play into it:

• Are you dressed well, groomed well, and do you look good?

• Is your posture erect and powerful (or are you hunched)?

• Are you alert, present, and attuned to your environment?

• Are you smiling and having a good time?

• If you’re with friends, are you a magnetic one in the group?

• In other words, are your fundamentals on-point?

The more of these you say ‘yes’ to, the better odds you get of attracting any given waitress at any given restaurant. Though there will still always be that element of chance:

• Maybe she’s in a committed relationship

• Maybe you’re just not her type

• Maybe she’s had such an awful day she can’t even think about romance

You’re not going to get every single waitress who serves you attracted to you. At least not immediately.

However, with good attractive fundamentals, it is possible to start off at least attractive to your average waitress.

You want her attracted to you from the get-go if you can get that, because it makes everything that happens after so much easier. Don’t neglect your first impression; it’s important!

 

How the Initial Conversation with a Waitress Should Go

The first time you interact with your waitress, keep it all business, at least verbally.

You should still smile warmly, be cordial, make strong eye contact, and all the rest. Still put the signals out there that say, “I am a powerful guy who’s used to getting what he wants.”

But, otherwise, only talk to her about whatever information you need to get your order:

• What’s the special today?

• How’s the [XYZ dish] here?

• What does she recommend as a starter?

If you’re going to ask her recommendations, you are probably going to want to go with whatever they are (“That sounds good. I’ll have that”). So: don’t ask unless you really don’t have a preference and are fine with whatever she recommends.

Don’t unnecessarily extend the conversation. Your goal at this point isn’t “keep her at my table as long as possible, talking as much as possible.” That isn’t going to make her fall in love.

All that will do at this point is frazzle her, especially if she has other customers waiting. Even if you’re attractive.

You must respect her time, and also not present yourself as an indecisive guy who can’t make up his mind about what he wants to order. A little time to decide is fine, or a few questions about the menu – but after that, make your selection and let her go put your order in.

 

Rules to Follow When Picking Up on a Waitress

Before we go on, let me give you a few general rules to follow.

You are going to want to follow these the vast majority of the time when picking up waitresses, and veer off them as rarely as possible (and then only if you know what you’re doing).

They are:

1. Don’t waste her time. She’s busy. She has other customers. Even if she likes you, if it starts to feel like you’re talking with her just to keep her there, she will start to feel the need to get away from you – which is very bad for your chances.

2. Don’t be too direct. She gets hit on by customers all day long. Keep a little mystery as you let the attraction build. Don’t worry, we’ll be asking her out later.

3. Don’t engage with her every visit. Sometimes when she comes to your table, you will want to chat her up. But if she’s visiting your table a lot – to deliver dishes, refill drinks, clean up plates, etc. – it’s good to be busy every now and again. If you’re talking to friends at the table, once or twice be too engrossed to notice her (unless she is very obviously and deliberately trying to get your attention, of course). If you’re by yourself, you can be engrossed in the book you’re reading, or the work you’re doing on your device, or a phone call you needed to take.

4. Allow the connection to build in pieces. You don’t need to rush the connection with her. You have your whole meal. Allow yourself to get to know her in bits and pieces as she visits the table.

One other rule, especially for beginners, is don’t try to plan the whole thing out.

That just leads to psyching yourself out when it comes to asking your waitress out later on. When all you can do is sit and wait for her to return, it puts you in a very passive position. Instead you want to stay relatively spontaneous and responsive, and AVOID excess planning, so you don’t plan things out then have to wait and pray for the “right moment” to execute your scheme.

If you catch yourself trying to plan out how to ask her out, just mentally tell yourself to knock it off. Reassure yourself that you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it, then put it aside for now.

 

You’ve made a good impression, put in your order, and didn’t waste her time unnecessarily.

Good, good, and good. Now what? What goes into actually picking a waitress up?

This is where the meat of the pickup begins: you must build an attractive connection with her, slowly, yet efficiently, over the course of your meal.

Your ideal situation of course is going to be:

• A waitress who isn’t busy at all; only one or two other customers there who need her

• Few others on-staff today who might make her self-conscious flirting with a customer

• An instant connection with her that causes her to keep coming back for long stretches

You’ve hit the jackpot when you get all three of those.

If you do, you don’t really need the rest of this guide. You can just skip right on down to the part on asking her out. You’re locked in.

Most of the time though, you are not going to have those elements:

• She may be busy, with lots of different customers

• She may have a lot of other people on-staff keeping eyes on her

• You may not hit upon anything that forms an instant connection with her

So, instead, you will just have to use good flirtation and good conversation to attract her.

But even before that, we need to find out if she’s a ‘go’ for even attempting a pickup on.

 

Gauging Your Waitress’s Interest Levels

When you first get a good look at your waitress, take care to take her whole appearance in, with an eye for what is unique about her. Does she have anything interesting that stands out?

Does she have…

• An interesting hairstyle

• A unique piece of jewelry

• A visible, artistic tattoo

• Nails done in an eye-catching way

• Artfully applied makeup

• An interesting accessory

• Fashionable clothing or shoes (apart from her uniform)

• Obvious muscles that show she works out

Anything she has that she has personally chosen or cultivated and is used to express herself is fair game.

Don’t pick things like her face shape or body figure that she didn’t control. We’re going to use the aspect of her appearance we select to compliment her on, and we want that to be something that reflects on her personality (i.e., how she expresses herself), not those aspects of her she cannot change.

READ MORE: How to Compliment a Girl Like You've Know Her for Years

You’re not going to compliment her before the order or while she’s visiting to take your order. Before the order she’s just familiarizing herself with you and your table and is in a less receptive mode. While she’s taking orders, she’s going to be focused on the order, often trying to keep everything organized in her head before she passes it to the cook. That’s also not a good time to try to get that initial connection going.

Instead you’ll wait for her to return to your table again, after she’s taken your order over to the cook.

You can now use your compliment in one of two ways:

1. If you think she’s attracted already and you want to dive right into deeper connection and flirtation to really get the pickup going, compliment her as soon as you can to confirm she’s into you and get things going more personal

2. Or if you aren’t sure or prefer to wait until you’ve set more of a foundation, save the compliment for a little later on to deliver after you’ve made a bit more chitchat with her

Once you’re ready to compliment, you will want to do it at a good moment, and deliver a compliment like this:

“You know, that’s a really interesting pendant you have on. What is that, turquoise?”

Compliment her on the item, and maybe ask her a little question about it.

“Good moments” to compliment include:

• When she’s very close to you, leaning over for a prolonged moment to refill your drink

• In the midst of another conversation with her, when she isn’t rushing off anywhere

• When she stops to talk to you about something personal (herself or about you)

In all these moments, she isn’t rushing and her focus is on you, or you and her.

She will always act flattered. After all, compliments are flattering! It’s nice to receive one.

However what you want to look for is whether she also acts attracted:

• Does she blush?

• Does she smile in a girlish, attracted way?

• Does she suddenly start gabbing on about the item, trying to make conversation?

• Does she suddenly begin peppering you with questions about yourself?

• Does her body turn to face you more fully? How much so?

• Does she start fixing her hair, straightening her clothes, or preening?

• Does she stand up taller, arching her back and puffing out her chest?

If you see two or more of these, she’s at least a little attracted.

If you see three or more, she’s pretty attracted – and you are well on your way to pick up a waitress!

 

Chitchatting with Your Waitress

Now you’ve established that she likes you – or maybe you’re waiting, saving that compliment gauge for a little later on. Fine either way.

The next thing you want to do is chitchat and flirt a bit. There are plenty of things you can say to chitchat and flirt:

• If it’s not busy: “I’m surprised they called you in today. Barely anybody here!”

• If it is busy: “Well they’ve just got you rushing all over the place, huh?”

• When she refills your drink: “You’re very good at that.”

• “So are you part time or full time?”

• “This a summer job for you or a lifetime calling?”

Notice that all these are questions or statements about HER (not the restaurant, or the other staff, or anything else). Talking about HER personalizes the conversation.

You need to personalize it before it can become a real flirtation.

You must AVOID topics that aren’t personal, as they just waste time, and time is the one thing you’re most short of when picking up waitresses. You must also avoid any kind of question that she is likely to hear a lot or that shows ignorance about her profession.

That means do NOT talk about things like:

• “How do you like being a waitress?”

• “What are the pros and cons of waitressing?”

• “How long have you been working here?”

• “Think a guy like me could do what you do?”

She either hears those all the time from customers or they force her to either give a diplomatic answer (e.g., “Oh I love being a waitress” when she really has a lot of grievances) or to vent (e.g., “Oh, you have no idea. You have to wake up early in the morning, the tips are horrible, blah blah blah”). None of those is helpful.

Instead, stick to personal questions/statements that aren’t things she’s heard a million times and don’t trigger diplomacy or excessive venting.

 

Deepening the Connection

Assuming your impression is good, you have an attractive vibe / a bit of sexiness, and she is actually available, she will be responding anywhere from a little good to very good to your compliment and chitchat.

At this point, you should start to see her visiting your table more, lingering at your table longer, and if she’s really into you potentially even forgetting other tables while she hangs out at yours.

You want to begin deepening the connection a bit, but just in small snippets.

The easiest way to do that is with deep diving. If you’re not sure how to do that, go read the article I just linked. You can also take the moment to elicit her values.

But you should only do this for a minute or two at a time!

Deep dive on a topic and find out more about her. Then let her go back to work.

You’re making a mistake if you suck her in then try to keep her there as long as possible. Yes, she may enjoy the conversation while she’s with you. But if you keep her too long, as soon as she’s away she’s going to be running all over the place apologizing to people, feeling like she needs to be careful at your table before she gets sucked in again. Then she’ll be on her guard.

Instead, you must mind our Rule #1 for how to pick up a waitress and be very careful that you don’t waste her time.

So, deep dive her for a minute or two, then let her go. If she standing around smitten just grinning at you, you can tell her, “I’d better let you go get to your other tables,” and then you are actually looking out for her, while also doing a small bit of a takeaway.

Bonus tip: if you tell a waitress you’d better let her get to her other tables, and she tells you anything along the lines of, “Oh, it’s okay, they’re fine for a while,” that’s an escalation window and you must escalate! The easiest way to do this is by inviting her to sit. Example:

HER: … blah blah blah [responding to your deep dive].

YOU: That’s fascinating. Anyway, I don’t want to monopolize you. I’d better let you tend to your other tables.

HER: Oh no, it’s fine. They’ll be fine. There are other waiters here. [smiling]

YOU: Oh! Well in that case, have a seat! [pull a chair out for her and turn to face it as she sits down]

 

Now we reach the closing step: the moment you ask your waitress out.

There are two ways to do this:

1. You can ask her out in a more conventional way and exchange contact info

2. Or if it seems like she’s REALLY into you, find out when her shift ends to meet up TODAY

There is also a third option of “don’t ask her out, but instead let the connection simmer” if you’re a regular there and you’re playing the long game.

Let’s have a look at each of these.

 

Asking a Waitress Out Conventionally

If you’ve had a good, flirtatious, attracted chat, then toward the end of your meal, as she’s cleaning up the plates and around the time she’ll bring you the bill, just tell her

“Hey you know it’s been really fun chatting. I don’t know if we’re breaking any rules here but if you want to get coffee or some food or do something fun sometime, it could be great.”

I like to add that “breaking any rules here” bit in because it gives her an easy way out if you read her wrong or she’s not ready or has some other constraining factor (perhaps she’s genuinely attracted to you… but she also has a boyfriend and doesn’t want to cheat) without making anything awkward. That way you can still come back to that restaurant!

If she says anything like “Yeah, they don’t like us going out with customers,” you don’t push it, you just say, “Sure, I understand. Rules are rules!” and give her a big smile. You’re not worried about it. You will occasionally get waitresses who still slip you their phone numbers anyway, or have a second thought here and telling you “Actually, I think it’s fine” (a guy handling rejection in a very cool way can be attractive enough to change the mind of a girl who was on the fence about him).

Otherwise, if she agrees, tell her great, and ask her what’s the best way to trade contact info (i.e., without everybody seeing her give her phone number to a customer). DON’T pull out your phone unless she says to! Be very mindful about allowing her to preserve her reputation in front of coworkers and other customers.

Not every waitress will care about that (some will happily exchange numbers with you in full view of everyone else), but many will prefer to write down their number and bring it to you, rather than have you take your phone out to take it down.

If she slips you her number, make sure you take the piece of paper out of the restaurant with you, too – don’t go tapping the number into your phone inside the restaurant (or even just outside)!

Follow up with my standard texting guidelines and you’ll be solid.

 

Meeting Up After Her Shift

If it’s going really well, and she is clearly very into you, there’s no point waiting for another day.

So here’s how to pick up a waitress that same day:

When you get a chance, toward the end of your meal, again as she’s cleaning up plates or about to bring the bill, tell her, “We should do something. Like, today maybe.”

If she gets excited or says okay, ask her, “What time’s your shift end?”

She’ll tell you. She might remember she has something to do and can’t actually do today. In that case, grab her contact info and tell her you’ll text her to figure it out. Or, you can even plan the date out while with her with a little joint date planning then and there.

If she’s down to meet, then take her contact info and ask her whether to meet her here at the restaurant when she gets off work. She might say yes. She might also prefer to go home and shower and change. Waitresses tend to get the ‘restaurant smell’ all over their hair, bodies, and clothes throughout a long day waiting tables. A lot of them will want to clean up before they go out with a guy who isn’t a coworker.

Either way, you set the time and the place for the meet – then make sure to show up.

Same-day waitress pick up secured.

 

Slow Gaming Your Waitress

Then of course there’s option #3: the waitress slow game seduction.

You got a good flirtation going with her, but you’re not going to ask her out again, because you’ll see her again another time. Or perhaps you don’t feel like she’s into you enough to go out and is just lightly flirting, so you’ll just keep it casual for now.

You can extend flirtations across multiple visits to her establishment, and become a more familiar, trusted face to her over time before you ask her out. This is essentially turning it from a cold approach pickup to a social circle one.

To do this, you’ll want to be a little careful not to deep dive too deep on your first visit, or any visit where you won’t be asking her out. Instead, just deep dive her a little, and otherwise keep the flirtation light and fun.

There are some risks with slow gaming a waitress instead of picking a waitress up that day:

• The restaurant may not seat you in her section on your next visit

• Your waitress may quit the restaurant to work somewhere else at some point

• A waitress who was attracted & available before may start seeing someone in between visits and get pulled “off the market”

If you’re crazy about this girl and you’ve got a great vibe, don’t slow game her; it puts too much out of your control. Ask her out while the vibe is strong and get that date set up!

However, if you’re not too worried about whether you end up with her or not, and/or this is a restaurant you come to a lot and caution is the better part of valor for here, then you can slow game, let the connection build over time, and on a subsequent visit, if she’s still there, and you get to chat her up a good bit, and the vibe is especially flirtatious, then ask her out.

 

There you have it, the full step-by-step process and all the considerations for how to pick up a waitress at your eating establishment of choice!

Of course, the steps here, with a little modification, also let you:

• Pick up hostesses
• Pick up barmaids
• Pick up bartenders
• Pick up cocktail waitresses

… in addition to letting you pick up waitresses of the standard “serving food in an eating establishment” variety.

Just keep our four (4) main rules in mind:

1. Don’t waste her time
2. Don’t be too direct
3. Don’t engage with her every visit to your table or spot
4. Allow the connection to build in pieces

… and before you know it you’ll be picking up waitresses like the old smoothie you always knew you could be.

For more tips on picking up waitresses, see Tony Depp’s guide “4 Ways to Pick Up a Waitress.”

And of course, make sure you’re applying the full SAC model of similarity-arousal-compliance from my One Date System throughout every waitress pickup. We talked about similarity a bit here (via deep diving and eliciting values) and arousal you’ll handle with your flirtation and fundamentals.

Compliance we did not touch on as much today – when we invited a very interested waitress to sit, that was one example; you can use most other standard forms of compliance with waitresses too. Just keep in mind that her bringing you food and drinks or taking your order is NOT compliance – she does that for everyone! You need to build compliance through other (more standard) means.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this piece. Here’s wishing you many happy waitress seductions in your future dining experiences!

Chase Amante