Playbook, restaurant
Nobody is by the phone, and it is not only because you are closed
A restaurant is unreachable at two quite different times and a guest cannot tell them apart. There are the hours when the building is empty, including the dark day when the whole place is shut, and there is the middle of a Saturday service when everyone is on the floor and the handset rings out beside a stack of menus. From outside, both look like being ignored. What fills those hours matters, because the things people ask at half past eleven at night range from harmless to the one question in this trade that must never be answered by a machine.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for out of hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The busiest hours for questions are the hours you are least able to answer them, since guests plan meals in the evening and that is exactly when every member of the team is running a service.
- Most restaurants have a dark day, and a message sent on that day sits unread for longer than the sender expects because there is nobody in the building at all rather than somebody in an office not picking up.
- The overnight window is when tomorrow's plans get made, so an unanswered enquiry at eleven is a table lost by nine the next morning rather than a slow reply to an existing customer.
- One category of overnight message cannot be allowed to sit in an inbox until Tuesday, because a guest asking about an allergy is eating tomorrow, and the out of hours wording is the only thing standing between that message and a queue.
How it arrives
- is anyone there tonight
- i called earlier and nobody picked up
- when will someone read this message
- can i leave a message for the manager
- do you answer messages during service
- is there a number that gets answered late
What has to be indexed for this to work
| When the phone is genuinely answered | Not the opening hours. The window when somebody is at a desk rather than on the floor, usually a couple of hours in the afternoon, plus whichever day is dark. Publishing this converts a guest's conclusion from being ignored into calling back at three. |
|---|---|
| The material that answers itself overnight | Service times and last orders, the current menus, how walk ins work, parking, and the booking link. These are the overnight questions, all of them are already written down, and none of them need a person to be awake. |
| The overnight wording for anything about an allergy | A separate line you have approved, saying plainly that this one cannot be answered here and giving the number to call in the morning before eating. It is the only place in this file where the correct out of hours behaviour is to refuse and give a time rather than take a message. |
| Where an overnight enquiry lands and who reads it first | The address, when it is checked, and whether that is the same address as bookings and supplier mail. An enquiry read at four in the afternoon that arrived at midnight has already lost the guest to somewhere that replied at nine. |
The reply
There is nobody by the phone at the moment, and to be honest there often is not during a service either, so calling between two and five is the reliable window [1]. In the meantime I can tell you when the kitchen serves until, what is on the menus, how walk ins work and where to park. If you want a table, the booking link goes straight into the diary at any hour, which is faster than waiting for us [2]. If you have a message for the manager, leave your name, an email and what it is about and it will be read in the morning.
It admits the mid service problem rather than hiding behind opening hours, which is the part that stops the guest concluding they are being ignored. It then lists what is answerable now, so the exchange is useful rather than an apology. The booking link is offered as the faster route instead of as a deflection, because at midnight it genuinely is.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message about an allergy, an intolerance or somebody being taken ill, and anything urgent about a booking for the following service.
This one I am not going to answer here, and it should not wait in an inbox. Please call the restaurant when we open and speak to the kitchen before you eat. If it is about tomorrow, leave me your name and a phone number as well and it goes to the top of the pile in the morning.
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 give an allergen answer overnight on the grounds that nobody else is available, because the reason it must reach a person does not weaken at midnight.
- Never imply somebody will reply tonight, when the building is empty and a promised reply that does not come is worse than no promise.
- Never present opening hours as the hours the phone is answered, since a guest calling at seven on a Saturday will not get through and will draw the obvious conclusion.
- Never take a message about an urgent booking without also giving the phone number, as an inbox read at four in the afternoon is no use to a table at seven.
Questions
- Should the overnight wording be different from the daytime one?
- For most questions it can be the same, since the documents do not change at night. The one that has to change is the handover line, because during the day it can point at a phone somebody will answer and overnight it has to name a time instead.
- Can it text or call somebody back in the morning?
- No. It sends an enquiry to the address you nominate and that is the whole of it. Any reply comes from a person, which is why the wording should say when that will realistically be rather than implying an automatic follow up.
- Does this actually save anything on a dark day?
- The dark day is when it does most work. The building is empty, the questions arriving are about hours, menus and parking, and every one answered is a booking that would otherwise have gone to whoever picked up.
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 out of hours in generalThe difference between an emergency route and a message form, and why an honest wait time beats a promise you cannot keep.
- Deciding whether this is the right place for the occasionDress code, how long you get the table, whether a toddler works at eight, and whether three courses are compulsory on a set menu.
- 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.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.