HannaAI
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You are the general manager. Hanna is the assistant.

In one room the owner is also the buyer, the marketer, the bookkeeper and whoever answers the phone at half past ten. Hanna is the assistant manager you could never justify hiring — quietly doing the jobs that get dropped when the person responsible for them is also on the pass.

The jobs nobody else is doing

Six roles, one person, and the ones that get dropped are always the same.

Not because you don't know they matter. Because service happens first, and everything else waits until the room is empty — by which time it is midnight and you have been standing up for eleven hours.

You are also the

Reservations manager

Enquiries arrive at every hour, most of them while you're plating. The awkward ones — allergies, access, a party of nine — take four messages and a phone call.

Hanna answers them, in real availability, and writes the allergy to the record.

You are also the

Buyer

Sunday night, working out what to order from what you think you sold, against what you think is in the fridge, at prices you last checked in March.

Hanna drafts the order from the forecast and flags every price that moved.

You are also the

Bookkeeper's supplier

A folder of invoices, a carrier bag, an email in February asking about a delivery note from October.

Invoices arrive at Hanna, post themselves, and the ledger goes over clean.

You are also the

Marketer

You know Tuesday is quiet. You know some regulars would come. Writing to them properly is a job that never reaches the top of the list.

Hanna finds the forty who fit the night and drafts the note for you to approve.

You are also the

Analyst

Somewhere in the till, the bank and the invoices is the answer to whether last month was good. Nobody has time to assemble it.

Hanna answers in seconds, from your own records, or says it can't.

You are also the

Finance director

Takings you know nightly. Margin you find out in six weeks, from someone who wasn't there when the decisions were made.

Hanna closes the day with the food, the hours and the rent already in it.

A week, as it actually goes

Most of this happens while you're doing something else.

The point of an assistant manager is not that they do impressive things. It is that the ordinary things stop needing you.

Monday · 09:00

You find out what last week meant

Before you're in, Hanna has compared the week like-for-like and reported anything that genuinely moved — with holidays, school terms and weather read alongside your own history. If nothing material happened, it says nothing.

Business Insight
Monday · 06:00

The week's order is already drafted

Worked back from forecast covers, through the recipes, to the ingredient — against what is actually on the shelf. You change what you want and approve it on your phone.

Menu & Inventory
Tuesday

The quiet night gets filled, or deliberately doesn't

Hanna knows Tuesday has thirty-two seats free and Friday has none. It writes to the regulars who come midweek and leaves the weekend guests alone — and it will not suggest you discount.

Marketing
Wednesday · 07:12

The delivery posts itself

The invoice arrives at your Hanna address, every line read and matched against what you ordered. One price is up 4.7% and it's flagged before you approve. Nine recipes reprice that morning.

Menu & Inventory
Thursday · 23:40

An enquiry you never saw is a booking

A coeliac and a wheelchair, for Saturday. Answered from your actual menu, table 12 held, the allergy on the record before the kitchen ever hears about it.

Booking & Reservation
Friday · 17:30

The team is briefed in thirty seconds

Three allergies, two occasions, eleven returning guests, and the mackerel is off after twenty covers. Read on a phone before doors rather than shouted across a pass.

Hanna POS
Friday · 23:15

The night closes itself

Reconciled against the card terminal, hours off the clock, food cost from the recipes, rent accrued. You look at margin rather than takings, before you go home.

Finance
Sunday

The stock take takes four minutes

Because Hanna already knows what should be there. You count what is, and the difference is priced as you go — so the conversation is about £6.75 rather than about grams.

Menu & Inventory

What it replaces

Fewer things to manage, not more.

The reasonable worry about a platform like this is that it's one more system to look after. In a single room it is usually four fewer.

What most independents run

  • A booking platform, charging per cover
  • A till that knows nothing about the booking
  • A spreadsheet for stock, updated when there's time
  • A folder of invoices for the bookkeeper
  • A mailing list nobody segments
  • A calculator, at the end of every night

What runs instead

One record. The booking becomes the table, the table becomes the order, the order becomes the stock movement and the cost, and the night becomes the margin. Nothing is entered twice because nothing was ever separate — which is also why the numbers agree with each other.

You switch functions on as you want them. Starting with bookings and the till alone is normal.

Rooms like yours

Two independents, running it tonight.

Both owner-operated, both single sites, both with somebody on the pass who is also the person the software has to work for.

The counter at Hotori, London EC4A

Hotori

Yakitori & Edomae sushi · EC4A · live since 2024

An omakase kitchen with heavy prep, sub-recipes inside sub-recipes, and a counter that prices differently from the tables. All six functions, every day, since the first version.

The grill at Charcoal Champ, London N1

Charcoal Champ

Chinese barbecue · N1 · live since 2026

Larger parties, faster turns, a long menu and cost that sits in weight rather than technique. The venue that turned assumptions into settings.

Both will take your call. We'll introduce you rather than send a case study — see the venues →

Where it isn't the answer

Three cases where we'd tell you to stay put.

A genuine marketplace dependence. If a real share of your covers arrives from a platform's diner network rather than from your own site and your own regulars, that network has value. Check the number before you assume it — but if it's real, keep it.

A kitchen with no interest in recipes. Everything downstream of food cost depends on your recipes being mapped and kept right. If nobody in the building will own that, you will get the booking and till value and not much else, and you should pay for less.

A contract with two years left. Switching mid-term usually means paying twice. Talk to us near the end of it — we would rather be the conversation you remember than the one that cost you a break fee.

Before you ask

The questions single-site operators actually ask.

Is this too much system for one restaurant?
It is one system rather than six, which usually makes it less to manage than what a single room already runs. Most independents have a booking platform, a till, a spreadsheet for stock and a folder of invoices for the bookkeeper — four things that do not talk to each other and each need attention. Hanna replaces those with one, and you switch functions on as you want them rather than all at once.

We're only twenty covers. Does the stock side make sense?
Usually yes, because small rooms have less margin for error rather than more. A twenty-cover restaurant with a tasting menu can have more complexity in its recipes than a hundred-cover pub. The question is not how many covers you do but how many ingredients you hold and how often prices move. If you buy fresh from several suppliers, knowing your cost of goods nightly is worth more to you than to a chain that can absorb a bad month.

I don't have anyone to run this. Who sets it up?
We do, with you. Menu extraction, recipe drafts, table plan, policies and suppliers are our work; correcting the recipes is your chef's, and that is roughly a day spread over a week. After go-live there is no administrator role to fill — the system is meant to remove admin, not create a job.

What if I'm the only person who ever uses it?
That is the normal case and the one it was built for. Hotori's owner is its general manager. The parts that matter most to a single operator are the ones that run without being asked — bookings answered overnight, stock moving as it sells, the day closing itself — because those are the jobs that get dropped when the person doing them is also on the pass.

Book a demo

Bring the job you most want to stop doing.

Forty-five minutes on a room like yours. Send your menu beforehand and we'll have costed a few of your own dishes by the time we speak.

Book a demo