A real inventory, not last year’s
February’s inventory almost never matches September’s, and the difference is not written down anywhere: four chairs broke at the last wedding, two poseur tables were lent to an in-house event and never came back, and three cloths have a burn in them.
The count that matters is not the total: it is how many tables of each type are available at once. A twenty-round set-up with eighteen rounds in the store is not a set-up, it is a problem waiting to be discovered.
Re-checking the room measurements
Rooms change. Winter building work, a new cupboard by the pantry door, a fixed bar installed in November, an access ramp. Every one of those moves the real capacity and none of them appears on the plan unless somebody updates it.
The check is half an hour with a measure: verify length and width, confirm the doors are still where they were, and add the new obstacles. It is the cheapest task on the whole list and the one that prevents the gravest mistake, which is selling the season on a capacity that is no longer true.
Updating the standard set-ups
With the new inventory and measurements in front of you, each standard set-up gets revalidated. The twenty-round one may no longer fit because of the new bar, or one more may fit now because a cupboard came out.
It is also the moment to clean up the catalogue: templates that were not used once last season are surplus, and anything that was improvised three times deserves a template of its own.
Menus, allergens and the team
Seasonal menus bring new dishes, and every new dish brings its allergen spec. It is the check most often put off and the worst one to be missing: the first event with the new menu is the one that arrives with an allergy nobody had mapped.
With the team, the important part is the leavers. Somebody who no longer works here should not still have access to client data, and that check is rarely done in September, when it is due. February is the moment.
The first wedding as a rehearsal
It is worth treating the first of the year as what it is: the one that finds out what was not checked. A little more slack in the timeline, one more person on the set-up, and a longer final walk-through.
And a review afterwards: what was missing, what took longer than planned, what new note has to go on the plan. Half an hour the following Monday that fixes the whole season.