PurposeSince the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of restaurant service quality studies has continued to increase. However, until now, there has not been an overall perspective or accurate instructions for research on restaurant service quality and experiential value enhancement. This study conducts multiple comparison studies to discover differences between consumer-perceived service quality and satisfaction perspectives on hotel fine dining and chain restaurants.Design/methodology/approachThis study integrates a hotel’s fine dining and chain restaurant to obtain 636 participants (e.g. Study 1 has 318 hotel fine dining customers; Study 2 has 318 chain restaurant customers), mainly expanding the SERVQUAL model and stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) theory.FindingsThe results of Study 1 show that value co-creation has a mediating effect on the relationship between service quality and satisfaction. In addition, customer experiences have a significant moderating effect on customer satisfaction. The outcomes of Study 2 showed that experiential value has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between service quality and satisfaction. In addition, customer relationship quality is a critical criterion in regulating the process of experience value delivery.Practical implicationsHotels’ fine dining should pay attention to the item risk in the value co-creation factor, while chain restaurants should enhance the item service excellence in the experiential value factor to satisfy the changing customer requirements.Originality/valueThis study provides several alternative models to verify the robustness of the empirical results.HighlightsThis research has brought clarity to the diverse mediation-moderation models that compare of hotel fine dining and chain restaurant consumer perceived service quality and satisfaction predictions.These models delve into how different service quality requirements after the epidemic that affect customer satisfaction, as perceived by customers consumed in hotel fine dining and chain restaurant.Value cocreation and experiential value emerge as pivotal factors, they act as mediators between service quality and satisfaction.They demonstrate a moderation effect of customer experiences between value cocreation and satisfaction, as well as customer relationship quality between experiential value and satisfaction.