Playbook, restaurant
Whether the wellington is on tonight is a question about the pass
In every other trade this question is about a warehouse and a number. Here it is about a chef who prepped a certain number of portions this morning, a board that was written at four, and a delivery that either arrived or did not. There is no stock figure anywhere, and the answer changes between the guest asking and the guest sitting down. What can be answered is what the current menu is and how often it moves, which turns out to be most of what the guest wanted.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for stock availability holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Nothing in the building holds a count, because availability is a chef's prep list and a board written before service, so there is no record to point an assistant at even in principle.
- Dishes here run out mid evening rather than going out of stock, and the same dish can be on at seven and gone at nine, which makes any answer with the word tonight in it wrong before the guest reads it.
- The menu changes on a seasonal cycle and by section rather than all at once, so a published copy goes stale in pieces, and the wrong dish it still lists is one somebody is now travelling in to eat.
- Specials in this trade genuinely do not exist in writing anywhere outside the room, since they are on a board and often decided the same day, and pretending otherwise is how an assistant invents a dish.
How it arrives
- is the lamb still on the menu
- what are the specials tonight
- do you still do the sunday roast in summer
- has the menu changed since last year
- do dishes ever sell out
- is the tasting menu running this week
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The live menu page rather than a saved copy | The page you edit when the menu changes, indexed as a source. This is the one intent where an uploaded document is actively harmful, because a stale menu produces a confident answer about a dish that came off two seasons ago. |
|---|---|
| How often each menu moves | Which menus are seasonal, which change weekly, which are fixed, and roughly when the next change falls. A guest asking whether a dish is still on is usually asking whether it is worth booking, and the cycle answers that better than a claim about tonight. |
| What is on a board and never online | State plainly that the specials are written daily and are not published, so the assistant says so instead of reaching for the nearest dish it can find. This one sentence prevents the characteristic failure of this pair. |
| The dishes that come and go with the calendar | The roast that only runs on a Sunday, the game that appears in autumn, the menu that stops for a fortnight in January. Guests plan visits around these and ask about them months ahead, and every one is answerable from a document. |
The reply
The lamb is on the current menu, which is the autumn one and runs until the change in the new year [1]. What I cannot tell you is whether it will still be on when you come in, because dishes are prepped in numbers each morning and popular ones do sometimes go before the end of a busy service. There is no stock list I can look at. The specials are written on the board on the day and are not published anywhere, so the room is the only place to find out what they are [2]. If it is the lamb you are coming for, an earlier sitting is the safer bet.
It answers from the menu and then draws the line at tonight, which is the boundary the whole page turns on. Saying there is no stock list explains the refusal mechanically rather than making it sound like caution. The suggestion about an earlier sitting is the only genuinely useful thing available here and it costs nothing to give.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks whether a dish will be available on a specific date, asks what tonight's specials are, or is deciding whether to travel for one particular dish.
I cannot see what is on the pass or what is on the board tonight, and I do not want to guess at something you might be coming a long way for. Call the restaurant and the room will tell you in a moment, or leave me your name, an email and the date and I will pass the question 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 say a dish is available tonight, because availability is a prep number that falls during service and the guest arriving at nine has been given a promise nobody made.
- Never describe a special, since specials exist only on a board in the room and anything said about them is invented.
- Never quote a dish from an older menu as current, as somebody will book a table on the strength of it and arrive to find it came off a season ago.
- Never offer to hold or reserve a portion of anything, which is not a thing a kitchen does and not a thing an assistant could arrange in any case.
Questions
- Could it tell guests what has sold out if we updated it during service?
- No. There is nothing to update and nothing that reads a kitchen mid service, and even if there were, the answer would be minutes old by the time somebody read it. The honest position is that it quotes the menu and refuses the night.
- Should we index the specials at all?
- Only index the sentence saying they are on a board and change daily. That is what makes the assistant refuse cleanly. Index anything more and it will happily describe last Thursday's special to somebody booking for Saturday.
- How much damage does an old menu actually do?
- More here than anywhere else on the site. A guest choosing a restaurant is choosing a dish they read about, and arriving to find it was dropped in the spring is a wasted evening they blame on you rather than on a file.
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 stock availability in generalWhat an assistant can say about ranges, restock patterns and alternatives, and the damage one confident wrong stock answer does.
- 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.
- Set menus, minimum spends and the table of twelveParty thresholds, set menus, minimum spends and pre-order deadlines answer well. The date itself needs whoever holds the diary.
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.