The Two Hours That Decide Your Month
The restaurant dinner rush phone is where the month is decided: what 11 to 1 and 5 to 8 cost you, and how to answer without pulling anyone off the floor.
On this page
- Why two windows carry the month
- What the rush does to the phone
- What a phone-only shift really costs
- Three ways to cover the rush
- The arithmetic on your month
- Covering the rush without pulling anyone off the floor
- What to try on a real Friday
- When a person at the host stand is the right answer
- Final Thoughts
12:10 on a Wednesday. The rail is six tickets deep, both fryers are going, and the phone starts ringing just as the runner leaves the pass with a tray of four. It rings four more times before 12:40. One gets answered, by whoever happened to be nearest the till with a bag in their hand.
Five o'clock is the same story with hotter plates. Tables are seating, takeout is stacking up, and the phone rings every ninety seconds until 8.
Those two windows decide your month. They are also when the phone is least reachable. That is not bad luck or bad staff. It is the shape of the business.
TL;DR
- Two windows decide the month: 11 to 1 and 5 to 8, when the phone rings hardest and nobody in the building can reach it.
- 30% to 32% of calls in the 5 to 8 p.m. window go unanswered, per a QSR Magazine analysis.
- 150 missed calls a month at $35 to $85 each is $5,250 to $12,750, and most of that leaves between 11 and 1 or 5 and 8.
- A five-hour split shift covering both windows is 108 hours a month, which is $1,728 at $16 an hour before tax and training.
- $99 a month answers 750 connected minutes, about 300 calls, and the bill is the same in a quiet week as a full one.
Why two windows carry the month
Calls do not arrive evenly, and neither does the money. Two stretches carry the day: 11 to 1, when the lunch orders land, and 5 to 8, when takeout and tables peak at the same time.
Everything you know about your week is in those hours. The prep is done, the line is set, and every person you pay is already doing something. That is also when the phone rings most. Industry estimates put around 60% of missed calls as someone trying to order or book a table, and those callers are not calling at 3 p.m. They are calling when they are hungry.
A missed call at 3 p.m. is a supplier. A missed call at 6:40 is your Friday.
What the rush does to the phone
Look at where the handset actually is. At 12:10 it is on the wall behind the counter, and the person nearest it is holding a bag and reading a ticket. At 6:40 it is on the host stand, and the person nearest it is walking two parties to a table.
In both cases the person answers the room first. That is the right call. A guest standing in front of you beats a voice on the phone every time, and no manager would tell you otherwise.
So the phone loses by default, and it loses exactly when each call is worth the most. Nobody is failing at the job. There is simply one body where two are needed, for about five hours a day.
What a phone-only shift really costs
The obvious answer is to put a person on the phone. Run the number before you post the job.
Covering both windows is a five-hour split shift: 11 to 1, then back at 5 until 8. Five days a week is 25 hours, which is about 108 hours a month. At the rate you pay a counter person, say $16 an hour, that is $1,728 a month. Add payroll tax and add the two weeks before they can take a complicated order without asking someone. Then add the part nobody puts in the spreadsheet: finding someone who wants to work two hours, leave for four, and come back at five.
Labour already runs 25% to 36% of sales depending on your format, per the National Restaurant Association's labor analysis. A phone-only shift sits badly against that number, because it is a fixed cost in the hours you cannot spare anyone and an idle one in the hours you can.
Three ways to cover the rush
| Way | What you pay | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| Answer it yourself | the ticket you drop while you answer | works until two calls land at once |
| A five-hour split shift | wage, payroll tax, training, about $1,728 a month | both windows covered, by someone who leaves and comes back |
| An answering service | a monthly fee or a charge per call | a message taken, a callback after the rush |
| Something on the line that takes the order | $99 or $299 a month | every call, day or night, at the same price |
Each of those is a real answer for somebody. The difference shows up after the caller says what they want. A message is not a ticket, and a callback at 8:15 arrives after the table has ordered somewhere else.
The arithmetic on your month
150 missed calls is the estimate a QSR analysis uses for a restaurant in a month. Take 60% of them, the people who were trying to order or book, and you have 90 calls that were somebody's dinner.
At an average ticket of $38, that is $3,420 a month that went to another kitchen. At the published $35 to $85 a call, the range is $5,250 to $12,750, and the high end is the version where the caller never comes back at all.
Both numbers are worth checking against your own count rather than mine. What a missed call costs you does the same arithmetic with your ticket instead of $38.
Covering the rush without pulling anyone off the floor
This is the part a phone agent is for, and it is worth being precise about what happens in the five hours.
Kovo answers the phone through both windows, and through the rest of the day and night as well, including after close and on holidays. The order is taken the way the caller says it, read back before it goes anywhere, and printed where you already cook: Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer.
A party order above the size limit you set can ring your own handset instead, so a twelve-pizza call reaches the person who should see it. A caller who presses 0, or clearly asks for a person, lands on that handset too. Tables go into your own reservation book, built from your hours and holiday exceptions, so two callers cannot take the same seat, and a wait time is quoted only if you set one.
A call under 10 seconds is never billed, so a wrong number and a quick "are you open" cost you nothing.
Kovo is $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, about 300 calls, or $299 for 5,000, about 2,000. There is no overage: at the cap the line forwards to your own phone. Fourteen days are free and take no card. If you want the price next to the others, the comparison pages put the monthly numbers in one row.
What to try on a real Friday
Five calls, about 20 minutes, whoever answers your phone:
- Order something with a modifier at 12:15: extra crispy, no onion, a side of ranch. See whether it comes back the way you said it.
- Ask for the order to be read back out loud before you hang up.
- Ask for a table for six at 8 on Friday, then check where that table landed.
- Ask whether the curry has shellfish. You want your own note repeated with a disclaimer and a nudge to confirm in the kitchen, not a yes.
- Call at 11:40 p.m. and listen to what happens after close.
Do it on a Friday, not a Tuesday, because the busy version is the version you are buying. A lunch order is easy to take when the rail is empty, and a rail is never empty at 12:10.
When a person at the host stand is the right answer
There is a version of this where you change nothing. If the phone rings four times on a Friday, if half of those are a regular asking about his table, and if the host stand is staffed through the whole rush, then a host with a handset already covers it. Paying $99 to answer four calls is a bad trade, and you should not make it.
The count comes first, because four calls a day is a different decision from ninety. Football season, a new location, a bad review, and a road closure all change that number in a week, which is why the count is worth repeating twice a year.
FAQ
Why is the dinner rush so bad for the phone?
Between 5 and 8 p.m., 30% to 32% of calls go unanswered, per a QSR Magazine analysis, because every person on the floor is serving the guests in front of them. The caller is the lowest priority in the room at exactly the moment the caller is worth the most. Nobody is failing at the job. The rush needs two people at once and you have one.
How many hours does it take to cover both windows?
Covering 11 to 1 and 5 to 8 is a five-hour shift, which is 25 hours a week and roughly 108 hours a month. At $16 an hour that is $1,728 a month before payroll tax and training. Put that number next to a flat monthly line before you post the job.
Can I keep my own staff on the phone and cover only the overflow?
Yes, and plenty of shops start there. A person at the host stand answers the table question better than anything on a wall, and something else can take the rest. What does not work is deciding it in the abstract: count a week of calls first, because 150 missed calls a month is a coverage problem, not an overflow problem.
What does the phone cost for those two windows?
Kovo is $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, about 300 calls, or $299 for 5,000 minutes, about 2,000 calls. The bill does not change with the hour, so the Friday evening call costs the same as the Tuesday afternoon one. When the minutes run out the line forwards to your own phone, and a call under 10 seconds is never billed.
Does covering the rush take anyone off the floor?
You supply three things: the menu, the hours, and whether cards are charged on the call or paid at the counter. The menu is pulled from your POS or from the menu page you already run, and it refreshes in the background every day. The part that costs your own time is the five test calls, which is about 20 minutes on a Friday.
Final Thoughts
Nobody loses a month in one night. You lose it twenty minutes at a time, in the two windows where the phone rings and the bag is in your hand.
Pick one Friday. Count the calls between 11 and 1, then count the ones between 5 and 8. If the total is more than a hundred dollars of food, the fix is cheaper than the problem. Take a test call with your own menu at 12:10 and see what it does with a modifier, a table, and a party of twelve.