Ideas for a busier restaurant

The same dish, ordered twice, on the same night

Two identical orders leave the same kitchen on the same Friday night. One is eaten hot; the other arrives soft. Almost everything that separated them was decided before either person tapped order.

Four Tuesdays, one change, and the only number that tells you whether it worked

A Tuesday offer that makes the night feel busier has not necessarily grown anything. Here is how to test one properly over four weeks — and the one split that tells you whether it worked.

Ninety seconds on the hygiene ratings site tells you more than the sticker in the window

You cannot cook your way out of the 7pm hour

Going faster is not a plan. At peak, one thing in your operation saturates before everything else and sets the pace of the whole hour — here is how to find yours on a single Friday.

You cannot cook your way out of the 7pm hour

Your restaurant's peak hour is set by one constraint, not by how hard anyone works. Here is how to find yours on a single Friday — and the three moves you have left at 19:40.

What did you run out of last Friday, and what did you throw away?

Everyone remembers what ran out on Friday. Nobody remembers what went in the bin — and the invisible mistake is the expensive one.

How to order from a restaurant you have never tried

Most of us order the one dish we already recognise, then judge the whole kitchen on it. Here is a ninety-second way to read any unfamiliar menu and find the six things that actually matter.

Count how many ordered a second time. That is where the growth is

The customers who will pay for your next twelve months have almost all eaten your food already. Four numbers from your order history show where they are being lost — and it is almost always at the second order.

Your rating is written by the loudest few. You get to change who they are

Reviews are not a sample of your customers. They are a sample of the two moods with enough energy to type. How to ask the quiet middle for restaurant reviews, and what to say when a bad one lands.

Your dining room turns three times on a Friday. It could turn four

Ask most owners where the money leaks and they will talk about delivery apps, food cost, staff hours. Very few will talk about the room they already own, on the night it is already full.

The refund is not the expensive part

Almost every "the order was wrong" message is one of four failures — and each one happens somewhere different in your operation. How to sort them, what to write back, and the one number worth counting at the end of the month.