A quiz that runs around service

This is the whole of the problem. A quiz that runs on its own timetable will start round three while mains are going out, and you will spend the evening choosing between the food and the entertainment.

Because you launch each question yourself, the quiz simply waits. Hold the next question while the floor clears, pick it up when it has, and the round does not care that it took eleven minutes instead of six. Nothing times out and nobody is dropped.

A restaurant does not have quiz teams, it has tables of four who booked for dinner. Team mode fits that exactly: one code per table, whoever is sitting at it, one shared score. Nobody has to organise themselves into anything.

It also means the quiz does not demand that everyone at the table takes their phone out over dinner, which in a restaurant matters. One phone on the table is enough.

Answer sheets and a restaurant do not mix. Paper on a table that is about to have plates on it, pens that go missing, and a member of staff collecting sheets between courses: every part of it works against service.

A QR code on the table talker replaces all of it, and there is nothing to take away at the end of a round.

The shape that works is short rounds between courses rather than a continuous quiz: one after starters, one after mains, one while desserts land. You control when each begins, so the quiz sits in the gaps that service leaves rather than competing for them.

Food & Drink is the obvious pack, and it is worth not overusing it. A restaurant crowd enjoys it precisely because it is a change from what they would get in a pub, and it stops being that if every round is about ingredients.