Friday's cook

In the small food operations I have sat with, the review score follows the rota, and the rota was never a marketing decision.

Put a month of reviews next to a month of shifts and the pattern is there within a minute. The four-star weeks and the two-star weeks line up with which cook was on. Every small kitchen has one person who cares: who tastes the sauce before it goes out, who notices the bun is stale, who sends a plate back from their own line. When that person is on, the place is what the owner thinks it is. When they are off, it is a different restaurant with the same sign.

The owner knows this so well that they have stopped seeing it. The rota gets written on a Thursday night around who asked for the day off, and nobody in the building thinks of it as the brand.

Then the campaign arrives. A quiet Tuesday needs filling, so money goes into an offer, and the offer works. Thirty new people come in. Tuesday is the night the cook who cares is off, because Friday is the night that matters and nobody wastes the good cook on a slow one. The thirty new people meet the other kitchen, write it down, and the score the campaign was meant to lift goes the other way.

The money did its job. It found the people. Then it walked them to the wrong door.

A campaign for a restaurant is hired to make a first impression on the owner's behalf, and the person making it is whoever is standing at the pass when the ticket prints.

The question before paying to fill a night is not how many will come. It is who is cooking it.