Field notes
for the modern restaurant.
Ideas, tools, and lessons from operating real hospitality businesses. Short enough to read between services, sharp enough to change tomorrow's pre-shift.
The latest widgets, tools, and AI prompts we're using right now.
A rotating shortlist of free resources for hospitality operators — from no-cost software to copy-paste prompts for Claude and Gemini that earn back an hour of your week.
Google NotebookLM
Drop in your training manuals, recipe books, and SOPs. Ask questions, generate quizzes, and even produce an audio recap for managers on the commute.
Toast Now (free tier)
Free team messaging and shift-level announcements for restaurants already on Toast. Replace the GroupMe chaos with something operators can actually audit.
7shifts Free Plan
Up to 30 employees on one location at no cost. Solid starting point for indie operators leaving paper schedules behind.
Google Forms + Sheets
Underrated stack for line checks, opening/closing checklists, and incident reports. Pipe responses into a Sheet, then ask Gemini to summarize the week.
Canva for Nonprofits / Free
Specials, menu inserts, and social posts without a designer. The free tier covers 90% of what a single-unit operator actually ships.
Cal.com
Open-source scheduling for trail shifts, interviews, and vendor calls. Self-host or use the free hosted tier — no per-seat trap.
Helpful Claude & Gemini prompts for the line.
Paste these into Claude or Gemini and feed them last week's numbers, a menu PDF, or a job description. Edit the bracketed bits to match your concept.
Weekly P&L narrator
"You are my CFO. Here is last week's P&L vs. the prior 4-week average [paste numbers]. In under 200 words, tell me the three things that moved the needle, the one line item I should be embarrassed about, and the single decision I should make before Monday service."
Menu engineering pass
"Act as a menu engineer. Here is my menu with sales counts and food cost % per item [paste table]. Classify each item as Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle, or Dog, then propose two concrete menu changes (re-price, re-describe, re-position, or 86) with the expected weekly margin impact."
Manager 1:1 prep
"I have a 30-minute 1:1 with my [GM / Sous / Bar Lead] tomorrow. Recent context: [3-5 bullets]. Draft an agenda with one win to acknowledge, two operational topics with specific questions to ask, and one development question that pushes them without putting them on defense."
Job description rewrite
"Rewrite this job posting for a [role] at a [concept type] in [city] so it reads like a human wrote it, takes under 60 seconds to skim, and is honest about the hard parts. Keep it under 250 words. Original: [paste]."