Restaurants & Food Service
An independent restaurant, bistro, or gastropub runs on a steady stream of small jobs between service and the kitchen pass — a four-star review on Google that wants a reply before the next prospective diner scrolls past, the prep list for tomorrow that needs to come off the bookings sheet by 6pm so the cold larder can start, the supplier order for fish that has to be in by 3pm or it does not arrive on the morning van, the table of ten on Saturday night whose confirmation has gone quiet two days out. These workflows take the repeating bits off the manager's desk and the head chef's evening so the human time goes into the cases where a person's judgement matters — talking the disappointed diner through what went wrong, deciding whether to push the Saturday lunch sitting back fifteen minutes, working out whether the new starter on Friday is ready to plate the mains.
Nothing in this category posts a public review reply, sends a confirmation request to a diner, or places a supplier order without review. Every review draft, prep list, supplier email, and booking-chase message stops at a Gmail draft or a Slack post in an internal channel for the owner, head chef, or front-of-house manager to read and send. The cost of a defensive reply to a critical review, a fish order with the wrong portion count, or a confirmation chase that names the wrong table is much higher than the cost of one minute reviewing the queue. Slack and the bookings sheet are used for coordination — diners' names appear in those messages because the team needs to act on them, and the sheet is the system of record until a restaurant-specific integration is available.
Use Cases
| Use Case | Description |
|---|---|
| Customer Review Reply Drafter | When a review notification lands in the restaurant inbox from Google, TripAdvisor, or OpenTable, pull the rating and the text, draft a sincere reply tuned to the tier, and put it in front of the owner for sign-off — never auto-posted |
| Daily Food Safety Log Chase | Each evening, check that the day's food safety log entries — fridge and freezer temperature checks, hot-hold readings, opening and closing cleaning sign-offs — have been entered by the kitchen team in the daily Google Form, chase any missing entries with the duty chef on Slack before the kitchen closes, and write the persisted record to a 'Food Safety Logs' tab so the inspection folder is one Sheet rather than a stack of clipboards |
| Daily Supplier Order Builder | Each afternoon, pull current stock and the next two days' expected covers, work out what fresh produce, dairy, meat, and dry goods we need, group by preferred supplier, and draft a per-supplier order email for the head chef or manager to send |
| Diner Birthday & Anniversary Outreach | Once a month, find past diners whose birthday or anniversary falls in the coming month, draft a personal rebook invitation referencing their last visit, and leave the lot in a Gmail drafts folder for the owner to review and send |
| End-of-Shift Handover Report | At service close, assemble cash and card takings, covers against the day's forecast, comps and discounts, breakages, and the duty manager's service notes into a single handover post to the team Slack and an emailed owner summary, so the night closes cleanly and tomorrow's opening manager starts from one document rather than three |
| Lapsed Diner Re-engagement | Once a month, find past diners whose last visit was between four and twelve months ago who used to come regularly, draft a short personal rebook invitation referencing what they ate and when they last came, and leave the lot as Gmail drafts in a labelled folder for the owner to read through and send |
| Large Booking Confirmation Chase | For any booking of six or more covers without a confirmed reply, draft a friendly confirmation request, walk a 7/3/1-day chase ladder against the booking date, and escalate to the front-of-house manager on Slack the day before if the table is still unconfirmed |
| Local Event Footfall Watch | Every morning, search the local press, the council events page, the nearest stadium and theatre schedules, and the day's weather forecast for anything within walking distance that might push tonight's covers above or below the booking sheet's forecast, and email the owner a short note flagging the ones worth a staffing or prep decision |
| Monthly Menu-Mix Engineering Analysis | Once a month, read the POS line-item sales export and the recipe-card costs from the kitchen sheet, work out each dish's sales count and gross margin for the month, classify each dish into the four menu-engineering quadrants (stars, puzzles, plowhorses, dogs) against the month's averages, and email the head chef and the owner a short report so the next menu rewrite starts from numbers rather than from who shouts loudest |
| Next-Day Kitchen Prep List from Bookings | Every evening, read tomorrow's bookings from the reservations sheet, combine with our standard menu-mix ratios to estimate the dish counts, cross-check against current stock, and draft the prep list per kitchen station for the head chef to sign off before service |
| Pre-Shift Team Briefing Pack | Half an hour before service, pull today's bookings, allergies, special occasions, and VIP notes from the reservations sheet, combine with the head chef's specials and 86'd note, and post a one-page briefing to the team Slack so the floor and the kitchen are reading the same thing before doors open |
| Weekly Restaurant Performance Summary | Every Monday morning, pull last week's covers from the bookings sheet, takings from the POS export emailed on Sunday night, the high and low reviews of the week, and the no-show list, and email the owner a one-screen summary with the numbers and a short read of what stood out |
| Weekly Stock-Take Variance Report | Each Sunday after the weekly stock-take is entered, compare the closing stock against the opening stock plus the week's supplier invoices minus the POS sales export, flag the lines where the variance is materially out, and email the head chef a short report so wastage and over-portioning are caught in the same week they happen rather than at the next quarterly review |