Playbook, restaurant
Deciding whether this is the right place for the occasion
Somebody who has never been is not researching your food. They have an occasion, a birthday, a first date, an anniversary with in laws, and they are trying to work out whether this room is the right room for it. The questions come out as small practical ones about dress and timing, but what is underneath every one of them is a fear of getting the choice wrong in front of other people. Answering the small ones honestly is what settles the large one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for first visit questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The guest is choosing between venues rather than deciding whether to use one they have already picked, so an evasive answer here does not produce a follow up question, it produces a booking somewhere else.
- Table time limits are close to universal in this trade and almost never published, and a guest who books a two hour table for a birthday and finds out at the table has had the evening framed for them by a member of staff.
- Dress code is the question most often asked and most often answered uselessly, because a two word standard means nothing to somebody who has not been in the room, and describing what people actually wear works far better.
- Whether a child works here is a question about the hour rather than the policy, since the same room at six with high chairs and at nine with a full bar are different propositions and the answer has to say which.
How it arrives
- is there a dress code
- how long do we get the table for
- do we have to have the tasting menu
- is it ok to bring a toddler in the evening
- do you need to book or can we just come
- is it a loud room on a saturday night
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The room described as somebody entering it would see it | How many covers, what the seating is, whether there is a bar, how the noise changes across the evening, and what people typically wear. Written as description rather than as a standard, because the guest is trying to picture themselves in it. |
|---|---|
| The table time and what happens at the end of it | How long a table is held, whether it differs by night or by party size, and what actually happens if the meal overruns. Publishing it costs nothing and removes the single most uncomfortable conversation your floor team has. |
| How the menu works, structurally | Whether there is a tasting menu and whether it is compulsory, whether the whole table must take it, whether there is a carte alongside, and whether courses can be ordered separately. Guests planning a special evening need to know the shape before they need to know the dishes. |
| Children, and by what hour | Whether children are welcome, until what time, whether there are high chairs and how many, whether there is a children's menu or smaller portions, and whether any area is over eighteen. The hour is the part that matters and the part usually left out. |
The reply
There is no dress code as such. Most people come in what they would wear to a decent dinner out, and you will see everything from a jacket to jeans on the same night [1]. Tables are held for two hours at dinner, or two and a half above six people, which is worth knowing if you are planning a birthday with speeches. The tasting menu is optional and the full carte runs alongside it, so nobody has to take it. Children are very welcome earlier in the evening and we have three high chairs, though the room gets loud and quite adult after about half eight [2].
The dress answer describes what is worn instead of naming a standard, because a standard is the thing the guest cannot interpret. The table time is given unprompted with the reason it might matter, which is the difference between a rule and a courtesy. The child answer attaches an hour, since welcome without a time is the version that produces a difficult ninety minutes at half past eight.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest describes an occasion and starts asking whether something can be arranged, a cake brought, a corner table, a surprise, or whether a large group could be accommodated on a particular night.
That is worth a proper answer from the team rather than a general one from me, because it depends on the night and the room. Leave me your name, an email, the date and what you have in mind and whoever runs the diary will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never answer the dress question with a two word standard, since a phrase like that tells a first time guest nothing and they asked precisely because they could not picture the room.
- Never leave the table time out of an answer about a celebration, because a guest planning speeches on a two hour table needs to know before they book rather than at pudding.
- Never say children are welcome without naming the hour after which the room stops suiting them.
- Never promise a particular table, a view, a quiet corner or an occasion arrangement, as every one of those is decided on the night by whoever is laying the room.
Questions
- Will publishing a table time limit put people off?
- It puts off the booking that was going to end in a difficult conversation, which is a good trade. Everyone else books knowing what they have, and the ones planning a long evening ask for a later sitting instead of arriving at seven.
- Can it tell somebody whether the restaurant is right for a proposal?
- It can describe the room, the seating and how loud it gets, which is genuinely most of the answer. What it cannot do is arrange anything, promise a table or take an instruction, so that part has to go to a person while the enquiry is still warm.
- Which of these is worth writing first?
- The table time and the hour children stop working. Both are asked constantly, both are currently answered by a member of staff on the phone during service, and both take one sentence to write down once.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling first visit questions in generalWhat to wear, where to park, how long it takes, whether they can bring somebody. Cheap to answer and disproportionately valuable.
- The menu that travels is not the menu on the wallThe collection window, the platform that draws its own radius, and the shorter menu, because some dishes do not survive a box.
- Whether the wellington is on tonight is a question about the passA dish sells out by eight, the board changes daily, and an old menu still lists something dropped in March. Never say it is on tonight.
- The one restaurant question that must end in a phone callState what your menu labelling says, never certify a dish, and route every allergy question to the kitchen by phone before the guest eats.
Try it on your own material
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