Restaurants Editing and Proofreading Services

A restaurant's margin lives on covers, and covers are lost to no-shows and late cancellations at a rate that closes businesses. A table of six that does not arrive at eight on a Saturday is a table that cannot be resold, staff rostered, food ordered and prepped, and a section of the room dead for the evening. Restaurants have responded with deposits and card guarantees, which work and which are also the single most common source of complaints, almost entirely because of how the policy is written and when the guest meets it.

We edit what restaurants and hospitality groups produce — booking and cancellation policies, deposit and card guarantee wording, no-show charge explanations, booking confirmation and reminder communications, table time limits and turn policies, large party and set menu terms, dietary and allergen enquiry handling, service charge and gratuity explanations, corkage and bring-your-own terms, private dining and event documentation, website and listing copy, review responses, staff scripts for booking and arrival conversations, and complaint and refund correspondence. Our editors work on the policy the guest meets at the moment of booking.

The cancellation policy is where a restaurant either protects its covers or generates its complaints, and the difference is entirely in the framing and the timing. A policy discovered on a card statement after a missed booking reads as a penalty imposed by a business that took the guest's money for nothing. We rewrite these so the terms appear at the point of booking in the same size as everything else, stated as a number and a deadline rather than as a reference to terms; so the reason is given in one honest sentence, because guests accept a charge that protects a small business and resent one that appears punitive; so the cancellation route is genuinely easy and stated in the confirmation and the reminder, since most no-shows are people who could not find how to cancel; so the reminder goes out at a point when cancelling is still useful to the restaurant; and so discretion is named — that the restaurant will waive it for illness and does not want an explanation. Restaurants that write it this way charge fewer guests and lose fewer covers, because the policy has done its work before the evening.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including booking data, commercial terms and guest information. We are editors rather than legal, food safety or allergen advisers, and we offer no view on consumer law, allergen obligations or any regulatory requirement. What we can do is make the policy clear and the guest-facing writing warm.