Your Restaurant Shouldn't Depend on You Being There
If your phone rings for every discount and every cancelled item, the problem usually isn't your team. It's that nobody ever wrote down who decides what.
Illustrative scenario: you're at a family dinner and your phone rings four times in an hour. A regular wants a discount. An item has to be cancelled after it was cooked. The drawer is 150 short at shift change. A supplier delivered less than was ordered. Each call takes two minutes. Together they mean you were never really off.
It's easy to read those calls as a sign that the team can't cope. Usually they're a sign of something simpler: the team doesn't know what it's allowed to decide, so the safe choice is to ask you.
Write down who decides what
Start with the decisions that generate the most calls. For each one, decide who can do it alone, when approval is needed, and when it gets reviewed.
| Discount within an agreed limit | Shift manager decides; recorded with a reason |
|---|---|
| Discount above that limit | Needs the owner's or area manager's approval |
| Cancelling an item before it's prepared | Cashier can do it; it appears in the daily list |
| Cancelling an item after it's prepared | Manager approves, with a reason |
| Cash difference at shift close | Recorded and explained at handover; reviewed the next day |
| Short delivery from a supplier | Receiving staff record what actually arrived; the manager follows up |
The numbers and job titles will be different for you. What matters is that the answers exist before the question is asked.
Set limits instead of testing trust
Approval limits aren't a judgement on anyone's honesty. They protect staff as much as the business: a cashier who followed the rule doesn't have to defend a decision later. Keep the limits clear enough to remember and wide enough that managers can actually manage. If every second decision needs approval, you've moved the phone calls, not removed them.
Make the shift handover a routine
Many owner calls are really handover problems: something happened on the morning shift that the evening shift discovers without context. A short, written handover fixes most of that.
- Cash counted against what the system expects, with any difference noted and explained.
- Voids, discounts and complimentary items from the shift, with the reasons.
- Stock that ran out or ran low, and anything waiting for a supplier.
- Open issues: a guest complaint, a broken fryer, an order still to be collected.
- The names of the person handing over and the person taking over.
Review exceptions, not everything
You don't need to watch every transaction. A ten-minute review each day of the exceptions, meaning voids, discounts, complimentary items and cash differences, tells you most of what you need to know. Look for patterns rather than culprits: the same item cancelled every evening may point to a menu or kitchen problem, not to a person.
When something does need a conversation, have it with the numbers in front of you and the process in mind. “This happened three times this week; what's making it happen?” works better than looking for someone to blame.
A week to step back
- Write a decision table for your five most common calls.
- Agree discount and cancellation limits with your managers.
- Introduce a written handover for every shift.
- Do a ten-minute daily review of exceptions for one week.
- At the end of the week, count how many calls you still received, and about what.
How Zad. Plus supports this
In Zad. Plus, each employee signs in with their own account, so every action has a name. Roles start from ready-made templates and can be adjusted, with detailed cashier permissions. Voids and discounts can require a manager's approval, and a record of changes shows who did what, and in which branch.
Cashier sessions close against counted cash. Each branch has its own safe alongside the head-office safe, with deposits, withdrawals, transfers and reconciliation against its ledger. Reports cover sales and discounts for any period, and alerts point to things that need attention, such as a safe that doesn't match its ledger.
The software keeps the record. The decision table, the handover and the daily review are what let you put the phone down.