Restaurants that tell you when to leave as you’re sitting down

Look, I get it…the bane of every server is the 2-4 top that camps out over two hours (and usually doesn’t order much and tips even less). But geezus there has to be a better way to encourage diners to not linger past the 1.5/2 hour mark. This post-pandemic trend of telling people when they have to leave as they sit down is really weird. Most people are done with their meal at this time normally without having it imposed upfront. It seems unfair and awkward for the host/hostesses and servers to have to gate keep people this way. There must be a better, more subtle, and practical solution than making people feel like there’s a stopwatch on their table.

Edit: It's been really helpful to hear the different perspectives on the need for informing restaurant guests of time limits at the time of seating. I've never had a problem with restaurants mentioning that it's a busy night and there are a lot of reservations. As far as I could tell, that used to be enough of a clue to not hang out at a table forever (with some exceptions, for sure).

I'm still not a fan of announcing an exact time (i.e., "7:30") and wish more subtle communication styles were enough for the majority of people. However, it sounds like there's an epic level of entitlement that makes having this emphasized so much at the beginning of the meal necessary. It was interesting to hear that it didn't bother some people at all.

I want to support Seattle restaurants and I know it's a hard time to keep an establishment going.

Also, found a good article talking about this issue: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/restaurant-time-limits-explained?srsltid=AfmBOoq-0az69KjMQcX3eETzPNL1o1U_PGhha4c9QCx3HLIm1EDFgQ7Y