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My wife and I recently visited ABQ Uptown for the third time and marveled at the new stores and the wide selection of products we could now choose from without having to order them out of a catalog or via the Internet.

I was surprised, though, to find an hour and a half wait time at the new Elephant Bar Restaurant. I've heard they have great food and service, so the "dining adventure" - as they call it - must be worth the wait.

We'll wait - a few months when inevitably our fellow locals will move on to the next "hot" restaurant.

That hour and a half wait was the longest I've ever been quoted by a restaurant since moving back to New Mexico a few years ago and it portends a shift toward the time crunch I experienced when living in Southern California.

Seriously, an hour wait was the typical minimum time you'd hear, and two hours was not uncommon. If any less, you'd wonder what was wrong with the place since the wait time was often a function of a restaurant's popularity, which was, in turn, a function of the quality of their food and/or service. People voted with their wallets.

Of course one incident does not make a trend, but I have several other examples to draw from that tell me we are becoming a more congested community.

Take, for example, this past year's Bernalillo County Wine Festival. Friends of mine waited in line for almost an hour trying to purchase a ticket, which was then traded in for a wristband. And just this past week, it took me 23 minutes - I kept track - to drive across town to attend a business luncheon. The old axiom that you can drive anywhere in Albuquerque in 10 minutes or less just doesn't hold up under the microscope.

Until everyone chooses to "live near where they work," which isn't going to happen in my lifetime, I think increasing congestion and longer wait times for any service is just going to be a matter of fact for our ever-growing community.

I figure we are adding about 45 people each day to the Albuquerque metro area (based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics from 2005). This is a composite figure of net deaths and births, and immigration from both international and domestic sources. From the latter groups, that's basically 30 new Albuquerqueans who arrive in our city every day looking for a home or an apartment - or a restaurant to eat at!

Smart marketers, especially retailers, can get ahead of this curve and attract the ever more time-sensitive consumer.

For example, the Elephant Bar Restaurant offered to take reservations for groups of 10 or more during the holidays. That's a good example to follow. Offering customers a way to make reservations will certainly engender more loyalty. Better yet, giving them a way to make reservations online, similar to Fandango for theater tickets, would even be better.

Incidentally, the Bernalillo County Wine Festival smartly offered tickets online, too. Unfortunately my friends, who complained about the long lines, didn't think to do that. I'm sure they will do so the next time.

Other ways to gain a competitive advantage in a congested environment would be to extend your hours of operation. By opening early, customers can gleefully get ahead of the rush hour traffic to purchase your services.

Many businesses, such as local automotive service repair shops even allow you to drop off your car the night before. And depending on the type of products you offer, you may want to make your business 24/7 by allowing customers to purchase your products online.

Of course, if you really want to impress them, you could make product delivery a standard part of your service so they don't have to fight the traffic to get to you.

You may also want to extend your hours into the weekends. As a friend of mine who still lives in Southern California recently told me, she basically lives her life in two hours each weeknight and then rushes through her weekend to finish chores and shopping.

Imagine waking up at 5 a.m. and leaving the house at 7 a.m. to make an hour and 15 minute commute to work only 5 miles away. You eat at your desk because, well, you can't get to a restaurant and back in less than an hour. Then, you depart for home at 7 p.m. to arrive there an hour or so later.

Since she requires at least seven hours of sleep, she only has two hours left each day to eat dinner, talk with her spouse and tuck her kids into bed before she goes to sleep at 10 p.m.

No, Albuquerque is not there yet, as I'm sure many of you will remind me, but from my perspective we are well on our way.

Smart marketers and retailers will take the time now to evaluate their delivery systems to feed increasingly time-starved consumers. They'll not only endear themselves to their customers' hearts, but - more importantly - their wallets, too.

Sacco is vice president of marketing at Kirtland Federal Credit Union, and an adjunct professor at University of New Mexico Anderson Schools of Management and at Webster University.