Part of the Kitchen Manager track. Lesson 1 of 10.
Where in the shift: days before.
Prerequisites: Module 42.
The sequence
Ask whoever books the room for the advance count.
Ask about the act — draw history, ticket price, dance night or listening night.
Check the weather for an indoor-outdoor building.
And put a number in front of the kitchen before they prep.
The decisions
Whether to ask at all. This is the lesson and it is one conversation.
A music room has better forecast information than any restaurant in the county — advance ticket sales, an act's draw history, a ticket price that sorts the crowd — and in most buildings it stops at whoever books the acts, per Module 42.
Getting it to the kitchen is free and it is the highest-return change in this track.
Which number to give. Not "it'll be busy." A count, a night type, and anything unusual.
And whether the night type is right. A dance night and a listening night have different eating patterns — people at a dance eat before and after and not during. That changes when the demand arrives, not just how much.
What you are reading
The advance count against the room's capacity.
The act's history here and in comparable rooms.
And whether last time's number was right — which is the only way the forecast improves.
What goes wrong here
Nobody asked. The standard weekend par applied to a touring act, and food out at ten.
A number given without a night type.
And the forecast never checked against what happened, which means it never gets better.
Verification
Compare the forecast to the actual for one month. The gap is the finding and it usually points at a specific night type.
The boundary
None specific.