Business has surged at T’s Restaurant (formerly known as The Grill) since its move from Murray-Herrick Campus Center in January 2012, but the increase in business has also caused some long lines and waiting times.

During convocation hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays, T’s is flooded with students and faculty stopping by for a custom-made sandwich or one of T’s many grilled menu items. However, the eaterie’s popularity has caused long wait times and lines that can sometimes extend out the doors.

Senior Joe St Mane said while he doesn’t eat on campus a lot, whenever he goes to T’s it seems to be busy, and that can sometimes deter him from waiting in line for food.

“It’s especially bad trying to get through that sandwich bar line.” St Mane said. “Sometimes I just get the premade stuff because I don’t have time to wait.”

St Mane blames the long wait time on a lack of employees. He said there were only about two employees making sandwiches during a busy lunch rush.

“When I look at it, I think of a place like Chipotle where they have a food bar that’s like half the length of the one at T’s, and at busy times they usually have maybe four or five people,” St Mane said.

T’s Operations Manager Gayle Lamb said the amount of employees T’s hires has remained about the same as last semester, and that it seems to be working well for them.

“After last semester we took a look at our schedule and retooled it to fit the activity when we knew we were busy and would have good traffic patterns, and we planned our staffing around it,” Lamb said. “But certainly, we also (considered) the amount of prep work and preparation time, and the amount of hands needed to do all that too.”

Lamb also said T’s has been busy so far this semester, something she credits to a large freshman class, and also the senior citizen’s classes currently being held on campus.

“With the size of the freshman class, I mean it’s almost 1,500. So that’s just more people in general,” Lamb said. “And we’re also seeing more visitors and guests. On Tuesdays, we have the senior citizens class that’s here for six weeks, and that’s an extra 350 people on campus.”

Some students, like junior Laura Appleton, said that they do notice the wait, but don’t mind.

“If I get (there) early it’s not as bad,” Appleton said. “(Waiting) is not exactly annoying, it’s just the checkout process that takes the longest time.”

Appleton said the credit card machines that T’s implemented last May take more time, but they are worthwhile.

“I love that they have the credit card machines now…because they didn’t have that last year and so I never ate here,” Appleton said. “It takes awhile for them to process the credit cards, I guess I don’t mind though.”

Lamb said T’s has worked out a solution to help work around the slow credit card processing.

“We have the two center registers accept credit cards, but we also have a third register that we use as kind of our express lane, and that takes cash and student I.D. cards, everything except credit cards,” Lamb said. “So we are able to put a large amount of people through in a short amount of time.”

Many students say waiting in line for lunch doesn’t stop them from going to T’s.

“Paying there is always a long line,” sophomore Ashley Johnson said. “But it’s still better than the caf.”

Gabrielle Martinson can be reached at mart5649@stthomas.edu.