Ask the rota first

In a small restaurant the summer campaign and the summer rota are written by the same person, usually on the same evening, and one of them is honest.

The rota is honest because it has to be. It knows the schools are breaking up around now and that half the kitchen has asked for the same three weeks, because home is far and the flights are cheaper in the same fortnight. It knows that on Thursday night there are four people on the line, that one of them is the dishwasher promoted for the month, and that the grill goes to whoever is nearest.

The campaign does not know any of this. It was written from the other document, the one with the ambitions in it. A summer menu. Six new dishes. A launch weekend, a creator dinner, a line on the delivery app that says thirty minutes.

Now read the campaign from the kitchen. Six new dishes is six new preps for four people who have not cooked them before. The creator dinner lands on the night the senior cook is on a plane. The thirty minutes was true in April, with nine on the line.

None of the four will say no to the campaign. They are not asked. They will cook it, late and wrong, and the customer who saw the ad will write the review, and the review will be about the food.

That is how a quiet month becomes a bad-review month: a promise made to a customer by a document that never looked at the other one.

The honest summer campaign is whatever the four people left can deliver on a Thursday night, done well and said plainly. It is smaller than the owner wanted, and it is the only one the kitchen can keep.

The rota is the real capacity plan. The marketing that reads it first is the only marketing that keeps its promises.