The allergen question a Pembrokeshire kitchen answers ten times a week

The phone rings in a Tenby kitchen at half six on a Saturday. A guest wants to know whether the fish pie has mustard in it. The answer sits in a folder behind the till, so someone dries their hands and reads it out. Twenty minutes later the same question arrives by message, and the answer is read out again.

By the end of service the same handful of questions has come in from the dining room, the phone and the website. A cafe in Narberth fields them about the cakes, and a takeaway in Haverfordwest about the sauces. In Saundersfoot the specials board changes every week, which quietly turns last week's answer into the wrong one.

That is the loop: the allergen and ingredient question, answered from memory or from a sheet by whoever is nearest, in the middle of everything else.

The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)

Take a kitchen that gets ten allergen or ingredient questions a week. Each one takes a few minutes to find, check and reply to, and the interruptions land in the middle of service. The figures below are assumptions, not measured results: an hourly rate of £30, and five minutes a question.

• × 10 questions a week = the count
• × 5 minutes each = 50 minutes a week
• × £30 an hour = £25 a week
• × 46 working weeks = £1,150 a year

Now the same questions with a draft step. The software holds the ingredient sheets and drafts the reply for the question asked. A person checks it against the sheet before it goes anywhere.

Score it: the three checks

• Hours. About an hour a week on this loop alone. It is not the biggest time leak in the building. It lands at the worst moments, though, and it never fully stops.
• Repeat. The questions repeat, but the answers must come from the written sheets every time. One page listing where each sheet lives would let a new starter handle the routine questions.
• Risk-if-wrong. A wrong allergen answer can put someone in hospital. That is why nothing is guessed or sent unchecked, and anything uncertain goes to a person straight away.

Try one thing this week (free)

Pick the five allergen questions your kitchen hears most and write the answer to each one from the ingredient sheets, in your own words. Put that page beside the phone and see by Friday whether anyone can answer without asking you.

Where a person stays

Software can hold the ingredient sheets, match a question to the right dish and draft a reply in your words. A named person reads that draft against the sheet before it is sent or spoken. Anything unclear or new leaves the queue and lands with a human, and so does any dish where a supplier has changed the recipe. Allergen and ingredient answers are safety-critical, so they stay approval-only, always. The software prepares. A person decides.

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