Playbook, restaurant
The menu that travels is not the menu on the wall
A restaurant that also sends food out is running two different operations through one kitchen, and the guest asking about delivery is usually looking at a website that describes only the first of them. The dishes that travel are a subset, the prices on a delivery platform are often not the prices in the room, the radius was drawn by somebody other than you, and the driver is not yours. All of that is answerable, and none of it is a matter of checking where an order has got to.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for shipping and delivery holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The delivery menu is deliberately shorter than the dining room menu because a fair number of dishes are ruined by twenty minutes in a box, and a guest who cannot find the dish they came for needs to be told that rather than left to conclude it has gone.
- Where a third party platform handles the delivery, the radius, the fee and often the prices are set on that platform rather than by the restaurant, so the honest answer sends the guest there rather than pretending you control it.
- A missing item from a delivered order is a matter for whoever took the payment, which is usually not the restaurant, so the assistant has to be able to say where that goes without appearing to shrug the guest off.
- Collection has its own clock, which is the kitchen's, so a collection order placed at the top of a Saturday service takes far longer than the same order at six, and a published wait time only means anything if it says which.
How it arrives
- do you do collection
- how long is a collection order
- do you deliver to our postcode
- why is the delivery menu different
- an item was missing from our delivery
- can we order a roast to take away
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which service is which, and who runs it | Whether collection is taken by you directly and whether delivery is your own drivers or a platform. Name the arrangement plainly, because the answer to almost every follow up question depends on which of the two the guest is dealing with. |
|---|---|
| The collection menu and the collection hours | What is available to take away, which dishes are not and briefly why, the hours collection runs and whether it stops before the kitchen does. Also whether you take collection orders during a service or only between them. |
| Realistic waits, split by time of day | A weekday early evening figure and a Friday and Saturday peak figure, because they are not the same number and quoting the first one all week is how a collection guest ends up standing in a doorway for half an hour. |
| Where delivery problems actually go | For a platform order: that refunds, missing items and driver problems are handled in that platform's own app, with a plain sentence saying so. For your own delivery: the number to call and how long you have. Guests contact the restaurant first either way, so the routing needs writing down. |
The reply
We do collection ourselves and delivery is run through the app rather than by us [1]. The takeaway list is shorter than the dining room menu because some dishes do not travel, and the Sunday roast is one of the ones we keep to the room. Collection is usually about twenty minutes early in the week and closer to forty on a Friday or Saturday evening, since it goes through the same kitchen as the tables [2]. I cannot see an order or check where one has got to. If something was missing from a delivery, that is handled in the app you ordered through, because they took the payment.
It separates the two services in the first line, because every other answer depends on which one the guest is in. The wait is given as two numbers rather than an average, since an average is wrong on both the nights it matters. The missing item is routed with the reason attached, which stops it reading as a refusal to help.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest wants to place or change a collection order, asks where a delivery is, or is chasing money back on an order paid for through a platform.
I cannot take an order or see one that has been placed. For collection, please phone the restaurant so the kitchen has it directly. For a delivery problem, that goes through the app you ordered on. If you want the manager to know about it, leave me your name, an email and what happened and I will pass it on.
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 take a food order or confirm one, because nothing reaches the kitchen and somebody will arrive for a bag that was never made.
- Never say a postcode is inside the delivery area, since the radius belongs to the platform and can change, and a guest turned down after building a basket blames the restaurant.
- Never quote one collection wait for the whole week, when the same order on a Saturday at eight takes twice as long as it does on a Tuesday.
- Never promise a refund for a missing item on a platform order, as the money went to the platform and only they can return it.
Questions
- Can it take a collection order if we are busy?
- No. It writes into nothing and there is no order system behind it, so an order typed into a chat window reaches no kitchen at all. It can give the number, the wait and the menu, which is what most of those messages actually need.
- Should we publish that the delivery menu is smaller?
- Yes, with the reason. Guests assume a missing dish means you stopped doing it. One line saying certain dishes are kept for the room reads as care about the food rather than as a restriction.
- Do we have to explain the platform arrangement?
- It saves you the arguments. Guests hold the restaurant responsible for the driver, the fee and the price difference, none of which are yours. A plain sentence about who runs what redirects most of that before it becomes a review.
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 shipping and delivery in generalCut-off times, zones, timescales, public holidays and duties on international orders. The material exists on most sites, it is just buried.
- 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.
- Why last orders matters more than the opening timeThe door being open and the kitchen serving are two different times, and most restaurant sites publish only one of them.
Try it on your own material
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