I run a restaurant. What would this look like?

It’s twenty past seven. Every table is turning, the pass is backed up, one of your waiters called in sick and the phone has rung four times in ten minutes. Nobody has answered it, because nobody could.

Three of those were people trying to book. Two of them have already rung somewhere else by now.

That’s the whole problem in one sentence: the ninety minutes when you’re least able to pick up the phone are the ninety minutes when it rings most.

An empty table at eight is gone for good.

A shop that doesn’t sell a jumper on Tuesday still has the jumper on Wednesday. You don’t. Tonight’s covers only exist tonight, and every one you don’t fill is revenue that was never recoverable in the first place.

Which makes the no-show the worst thing that happens all week. It isn’t just an empty table — it’s an empty table you turned somebody away for.

A booking that confirms itself, and reminds them the day before, is the single cheapest thing you can fix.

And the fish came in different today.

Your menu changes more often than most websites change in a year. Specials, a supplier letting you down, the price of everything moving. If updating that means emailing whoever built the site and waiting until Thursday, the site is wrong by lunchtime most days.

You change it. From your phone. At four in the afternoon, standing in the kitchen.

What actually changes, in the order it matters to you.

Orders arrive without anyone writing them down.
Every customer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
Your prices and photos change when you say so, without waiting on anyone.
It reads properly on a phone, which is where most of them are.
Money's collected, receipts go out, and nothing gets chased.
The pictures look like your business, not like a stock catalogue.
Your page keeps posting in the weeks you'd normally go quiet.
Your ads point at your street, not your country.
A customer's history is remembered forever, so nobody re-explains anything.
Someone who left without buying gets a reason to come back.

Real work

A service in progress with the bookings arriving on their own — the screen on the pass, the phone nobody had to answer, and the covers that got filled anyway.

Reserved — not filled yet

Point the audit at your site and it’ll tell you what someone finds when they look you up at seven o’clock on a phone, hungry, deciding between you and two others.