Only what was served

The report on last month is being written this week, and every number in it is a count of something that happened.

Orders taken. Covers served. Units sold. Each one the record of a transaction that completed.

There is no line in that report for the call the kitchen stopped answering at ten because the pass was three tickets deep, or the delivery zone somebody switched off for two hours, or the size that ran out on the fourth day, or the family told there was nothing until eleven who went somewhere else instead. None of it was recorded, because a business that is full has no spare hands for record keeping, and every system in it logs what it processed.

So the largest month of the year produces a number that describes the operation rather than the market. It is a measure of how much could be served. Whatever was wanted above that line left quietly, with no complaint, no refund and no row in anything.

I have sat in a great many reviews of a strong month, and the question nobody asks is what was turned away, because there is no data behind it and a meeting will not hold a question that arrives empty.

The honest version of the review puts the limits in the room: the nights the kitchen closed early, the hours the app was switched off, the lines that went out of stock and on which day. None of it is precise. All of it is the shape of the demand nobody counted.

The number in the report is the size of the business. The number worth having never reached it, and the only copy of that one is in the head of whoever was standing at the door.