Menu mix and prep-list alignment
We read which dishes actually leave the pass and rewrite the prep list so garnish, protein, and pastry match the coming week's covers rather than last winter's habit.
From Cross, Somerset
The week ahead, hung beside the pass.
We read till extracts, delivery notes, weather, and the village diary, then write a food and beverage demand forecasting dashboard the head chef can actually stand in front of: covers by sitting, 86-risks, and the prep that follows.
A briefing is a document the brigade will use.
System Pathpoint does not sell a login. We commission a ten-day kitchen demand briefing: a printed calendar, a passworded page for the GM, and a walkthrough at the pass. The subject is food and beverage demand — covers, dish mix, cellar pull — written so a wet Wednesday in Somerset does not produce Thursday's unused garnish.
Houses come to us when the till already knows what sold, but the prep list still follows last winter. If you run a dining room, a pub with a cellar, a hotel kitchen, or a marquee beside the restaurant, the work starts with extracts you already have.
Where we sit with the kitchen officeRelated packs
The kitchen briefing is the flagship. Cellar, banquet load, and prep-list work sit beside it when the house actually needs them.
Cellar and beverage allocation
A cellar pack that ties keg, cask, and bottle pull to expected covers and wet-led sessions, so the order to the brewery matches the diary rather than a standing par.
Banquet and marquee load
For sites that overlay weddings, civic dinners, and outdoor service onto a regular restaurant, we separate the diary so the à la carte pass is not starved on the same afternoon.
Quarterly forecast refresh
A returning visit to the same site after a menu change, a new sitting, or a season turn, updating the wall calendar without repeating the full first briefing.
What operators said after the calendar went up
“They sat in the kitchen office with last March's booking sheets and pointed at the Fridays we always over-ordered hake.”
More client notes“I wanted the cellar sheet the same week as the kitchen calendar. It arrived two days later than promised because they insisted on walking the cold room.”
Field notes from dining rooms and cellars
Reading a wet Wednesday in a Somerset dining room
Rain on the A38 does not cut covers evenly. It cuts the 12:30 sitting first, then the early evening two-tops, while the regulars who walk from the village still arrive.
Why cellar pulls lag behind covers by two days
A busy Saturday at the tables does not empty the same kegs on Saturday night. The bar often pours the delayed demand on Monday, when the kitchen is already ordering as if the week were quiet.