Ideas for a busier restaurant

Somebody pressed that, or a clock did: how to read a delivery tracker

Some steps on the bar move because somebody in the kitchen pressed a button. Others move because a clock reached a number. Here is how to tell them apart — and which two gaps are worth watching.

Units sold is the least useful column on your sales report

Top sellers tells you what people ordered — not what it cost you in the one thing you cannot buy more of on a Friday night. Sort one week of sales three ways and the order changes twice.

The curry gets better overnight. The rice gets riskier.

Curry really is better the next day. Rice is the one to be careful with. Six common beliefs about leftover takeaway, checked against what the Food Standards Agency actually advises.

Six people, one order: what goes in the basket, and when it goes in

Ordering a takeaway for six is not six orders in a row. What to put in the basket so most of it arrives hot, why the late addition costs everyone twenty minutes, and the bit that never goes in the notes box.

A portion is whatever the busiest person in your kitchen decides it is

Ask how much chicken goes into your best seller and most kitchens answer with a hand. Weigh ten portions and you find several different food costs — here is where the extra grams get in, and the one card that stops them.

"No onions, please" — what actually happens to the note you leave on an order

The little box at the end of checkout is read for about two seconds by one person in a hot kitchen. Here is what to put in it, what to leave out, and the one thing that should never go in it at all.

If your delivery radius has not moved since opening week, your nearest customers are paying for it

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.