Large party bookings by phone: what to ask, and what not to
An eight-top is your most valuable booking and the easiest to lose on the phone. The five questions that matter, and why you should not ask for every guest's details.
Insights
For the people running the floor.
Page 6 of 9.
A reservation no-show policy you can actually enforce
Most policies fail at enforcement, not wording. When a card hold is worth it, when a reminder does the same job, and a template you can adapt.
Split checks: what your POS has to get right
Even splits, item splits and split tenders each fail in their own way, usually by a cent and sometimes with a tip on the wrong card. What to test before a busy Friday does it for you.
Your labor cost is 32%. Is that good?
The 25–35% band covers formats that barely resemble each other, and prime cost governs more than labor alone. What the benchmark cannot know is your rent.
The labor cost formula, and the three places it goes wrong
The arithmetic takes ten seconds. Two shops with identical books still land four points apart, because the errors are all in the inputs.
What is labor cost, and what counts as part of it
Not the timesheet total. Fully loaded runs 15–25% above wages, and every benchmark you will be compared against is quoted that way.
Your phone rings hardest when you cannot answer it
A call during service costs you twice — the booking and the table that waited. What actually gets asked, and which peak to fix first.
Service charge vs tip: why the label matters
An automatic 20% on a party of eight isn’t a tip, whatever the receipt calls it. How the two differ for tax, for staff and for the new federal tip deduction.
Tip pooling rules: who can share, and who can’t
Managers can’t take from a tip pool, and cooks can join only if you pay full minimum wage. The federal rules, where states go further, and what to record.
Food cost percentage: the formula and the trap
The formula is one line; the number is only as good as your inventory count. How to calculate food cost, what a good percentage is, and why yours drifts.
Restaurant profit margins: what is normal
Everyone quotes 3–5%; survey data says the typical full-service restaurant kept less. What a $1.2M restaurant keeps, and whether the owner’s pay is in it.
What a restaurant phone setup actually has to do
It rings hardest when nobody can reach it. Why more lines do not help during service, what the four kinds of call want, and the takeout question.