Ideas for a busier restaurant

Platform says 30% commission. Here is what a £22.50 order actually costs you

The contract says 30%. Once VAT lands on the commission, the deduction is 36% — and after food, labour and packaging you keep £2.42 of a £22.50 order. The full arithmetic, and what to do about it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.