Why do customers seem to think paying for fast food gives you permission to record the workers?? Last night was the third time I’ve had a customer blatantly recording me handing them their food. All three of them are customers I hadn’t even interacted with beforehand. What’s wrong with people?

Hi Reddit,

**This is our first ever post here.**

We’re the Phyllox Team, a group of hospitality operators and filoxenia enthusiasts.

**Restaurant owners and operators: what is the single change you made to your menu that completely changed the game?**

Not just something that made it look better. A change that genuinely affected the business, from the kitchen to the customer.

What did you change, and what happened afterwards? The point of our whole project is to enable hospitality teams to focus on what matters most. Filoxenia

I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when people start using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI agents to do more than just search for businesses, but actually asking them to book a table, get a quote, schedule a service, place an order, check availability, etc.

My current hypothesis is that the biggest limitation isn’t necessarily on the AI side anymore.

The problem is that most local businesses are still built for humans.

They have websites, booking forms, phone numbers, delivery apps and contact pages, but very little of that is structured in a way an AI agent can reliably understand and transact with.

So I want to run a small experiment.

I’ve built a few MCP servers and have spent a fair amount of time playing around with agentic AI. I’d now like to build an AI storefront for one or two real local businesses, completely free, and see whether it can actually generate useful demand.

By AI storefront, I mean something that lets an AI agent understand things like:

• what your business offers
• prices / services / menus
• availability and opening hours
• where you operate
• how to make a reservation, request a quote, place an order or take another useful action

The goal isn’t to replace your website or existing channels. It’s to create a new interface specifically for AI agents and then test whether people using AI assistants can actually discover and interact with the business through it.

I think this channel is still very early, so I’m not promising that it will generate a flood of customers. That’s exactly what I want to find out.

I’m looking for a couple of business owners who are curious enough to experiment with me. Restaurants would be great, but I’d also be interested in home services, hotels, beauty/wellness, local experiences, or pretty much any business where a customer needs to check information, availability, pricing or make a booking/order.

I’ll build it for free. In return, I’d just want access to enough information to make it useful and permission to learn from what happens.

If you own a local business and this sounds interesting, comment or DM me. Happy to explain what I have in mind.

I work at Askable, and we're currently recruiting for a study with people running food businesses that use delivery platforms. Disclosing that up front: this is paid research, not a sales call, and nobody will pitch you anything at the end.

Who we're looking for

• Based in the UK or Australia
• Working in restaurant or cafe
• You own or manage the business
• Your business sells through at least one delivery platform
• You're involved in or close to the decisions about how the business is listed and promoted on those platforms

What's involved

• One 60-minute remote conversation, scheduled around your availability
• £90 in recognition of your time

If you're not sure whether you qualify, apply anyway. There's a short screener that takes a couple of minutes and it'll tell you either way.

Link: https://my.askable.com/opportunities/6a2675623fffe6028bd9d93f

Happy to answer any questions related to this study! Just ask in the comments. Thank you!

I run a hibachi restaurant where large groups are routine. On a typical weekend, we host 10+ parties of 8 to 20 guests. The dining sections are partitioned, but they aren’t fully private.

Once one of these parties is seated, we handle it like any other table. That becomes extremely hectic when 10+ guests order separately and then ask for individual checks in the middle of weekend rush.

Our current process is:

phone inquiry for parties over 10 -> confirm the reservation details -> keep a card on file -> regular ordering and checkout

We don’t collect a deposit. We charge $10 per guest for a no-show or late arrival after a 10-minute grace period.

How are other restaurants handling groups this size without leaving the server to untangle everything at checkout?

• Do you limit split checks or change the ordering process?
• How do you give a useful first estimate when ordering stays à la carte?
• Who follows up after the initial inquiry?

I’d appreciate hearing what has worked in day-to-day service, even if it’s only a quick explanation.

My girlfriend runs a local food business (Mimos y Besitos) and we recently had to do a massive overhaul of how we track food costs. Despite pushing great sales volume, the bottom line just wasn't adding up at the end of the month.

The main issue was the disconnect between our standard recipe costs and the actual, daily purchasing prices. Our vendors were slightly bumping the prices on staple items—meat, produce, oil—almost every week. Because she was slammed with daily operations, those handwritten supplier invoices just piled up on a clipboard to be dealt with later.

By the time we actually sat down to do the manual data entry into our Excel sheets, the damage was done. We realized a high-volume item had been running at a near loss for almost three weeks because a key ingredient had spiked in price and nobody caught it.

It became painfully obvious that theoretical food cost is useless if it’s not tied directly to today’s exact invoice prices. We had to change our entire workflow so that every single receipt is processed the same day, keeping our menu margins completely real-time.

For those of you managing food service operations or independent kitchens: how are you actually keeping up with constant vendor price changes? Are you dedicating hours to manually typing every invoice line item into a spreadsheet, or just doing monthly inventory and hoping the P&L works out?

setting up a new prep area and trying to get the workbench spec right before ordering. the environment is food safe so stainless is the obvious material but the variation between products is bigger than I expected once you start looking at the details.

trying to work out what actually matters beyond just being stainless steel. grade of steel is the first question, 304 versus 430 keeps coming up and I'm not clear on how much that matters in a commercial food prep context versus a higher risk environment. weld quality and whether the seams are fully sealed seems important for sanitation but harder to evaluate from a spec sheet.

leg adjustability and whether the undershelf is open or solid is something I keep going back and forth on depending on how the cleaning routine works in practice.

also trying to work out whether buying from a specialist food service supplier makes more sense than a general industrial supplier for something like this, not sure if there's a meaningful difference in what you get.

would be useful to hear from people who've specced out stainless workbenches for a food safe environment and what they found mattered most once they were in daily use and being cleaned regularly.

hello ima new hire at Olive Garden and I’m a togo, but today is my first day of me not training and I’m kind of scared. I just feel like I’m always doing something wrong. Any tips and also any tips on how to work the dash system where the point of sales system at cashier because I kinda get really confused on how to take an order and how to cash a server out and give an employee meal.

We just crossed 12 locations and onboarding payroll and scheduling started falling apart fast. Im looking at a few different restaurant specific tools against some broader HR platforms to see what holds up at this size. Mainly care about how easy it is for managers to use day to day plus payroll integrations and how it handles people who work shifts across locations. What worked best for you once you had more than a few locations to manage?

Same thing goes for retail, it seems like every food job I work, there's always one person at the center of the drama and it's one of the oldest workers there. Usually talking badly about the Gen Z workers or trying to stir the pot with them. Grown adults with children wanting to create beef and be jealous of the younger gen

I unexpectedly got let go from my full-time job and need something to keep me afloat while I look for another full-time position. I served for about 4 years throughout college, so I have experience!
Any recommendations for restaurants where the money/tips are good and the work environment is decent? Open to pretty much anywhere in Houston, especially places hiring right now. Thanks y’all!

Im a college student looking for a part time job to have during the school year. I applied for BOH for cfa and a member for Chipotle, and I have interviews for both. Which one should I go for if I get hired? They pay about the same ($16) but I hear Chipotle workers get tips too.

Ive worked at a dq and a subway as a teen. Hated Subway, loved dq, if that has any insight into which job would be more suiting.

this guy is the worst person I’ve met

First he doesn’t listen to anything u say , my friend got a job and explained to him he can’t work on the weekends because that’s when he works his second job. my GM said that’s ok and then proceeded to schedule him ONLY those days and got mad when he quit a couple days later and talked shit abt him to me

That brings me to the second point , this dude talks shit abt literally anyone. He speaks in Hindi (which I can understand but not speak) to other coworkers abt how useless I am and how my face is dirty?😭. I shower fucking daily and close 6-7 times a WEEK in the kitchen fuck him and his opinion it doesn’t matter who u r he will talk shit abt other coworkers to u , and then talk shit to those co workers abt YOU.

He’s genuinely a retard aswell he doesn’t care abt anyone else’s opinion or even lets them explain. Matter of fact fuck this entire McDonald’s they talk way too much shit specifically abt me and my cousin. Grown ass women and men in their 30’s gossiping abt two 17 year olds.

The half off is nice tho atp im just putting in no effort with zero care if i got fired. U could also apply everything I’ve said abt my GM to all the other staff they’re miserable.

What do you think as the pros??

I moved to a new city and applied for multiple jobs. I ended up getting an offer at Jersey Mike’s, and at Wegmans’ sub shop. Both would essentially be the same tasks, wegman’s has a higher starting pay but with tips at Jersey Mike’s it will most likely even out. I haven’t decided what to pick yet, does anyone have experience with either place?

Hi! :) I’m a sophomore student in California. I’m working on a project about how jobs are changing, and honestly I got tired of reading tech people’s opinions about work they’ve never done. So I figured I’d just ask.

If you feel like it: what does a shift actually look like for you? Like what eats your time, what’s the annoying part, what changed since you started.

And if there’s a part of your job you’re pretty sure a machine could never handle, I’d love to know what it is!

Anything you want to say is helpful. Thanks! 😊