It’s called supply and demand. If there is a 5 hour wait, there’s a problem: no local will wait 5 hours for a burger so you exclude them anyway. Price is the best mechanism to address supply and demand.
Thats not a solution for the problem though, if your goal is to keep your old customer base. It is only a solution if you view your restaurant as an investment instead of a passion. The counter example from the article is Paiche.
edit: To give another example, I have a kebab shop in my neighborhood who will not take any orders by phone let alone online. They dont have flyers or a web presence. Its a small street faced window run by an immigrant family who keeps the booth open throughout the day, from 11 to 11 longer or shorter depending on when they are out for the day. Most of the time the place is empty but during mealtimes there is regularly a line for half an hour. For the area, this is extremely well. And they sit right next to two other kebab shops, a pizza place and two asian places with mostly no line, literally the street down in 3 minute walking distance.
The reasonable thing would be to close the shop in the afternoon and take orders in advance, but thats not what they want for their shop. They want to talk and be a place where people meet, despite them not having any tables and not serving any drinks except a tea on the house from time to time.
And their food is absolutely amazing. Home made sauce and bread, it is worth the wait or to eat at 4pm in the afternoon. They dont let them self get rushed and it is always an amazing meal.
All the successful restaurants I've experienced chose to give preferential treatment to locals and regulars. That's because they often give the place the charme that makes it special in the first place. And that the business is rather cyclical, and you don't want to end up without tourists AND local all hating you.
At the point where you're running 20 tables or more for three rounds every night (plus mabybe 2x lunch) you stop caring about making more money. Because if money were that important, you would have gone into investment banker, not chef.
Plus restaurants tend to get into and out of favour. IT'
And everyone hates tourist. Seriously: if you work anywhere close to tourists, you will hate work because it's full of tourists. Then you take a vacation and start hating yourself.
