How long a guest note stays valid: practical information versus private speculation
A look at how restaurants can assess guest notes by how long they remain valid, who they are actually written for, and how the wording determines whether a note gives staff a task to act on or simply records a private judgement about the guest.
How long a note stays valid decides whether it's useful
A guest note can relate to a lasting preference that repeats at every visit, or to something that only applies to this one booking. A guest who always prefers a window table belongs in the permanent profile. A guest celebrating a birthday tonight, or arriving with a pram this particular time, belongs in the booking itself - not in a note that follows the guest indefinitely.
Notes with a limited shelf life create the most confusion when they aren't flagged as such. A guest who has recently had surgery and needs extra space around the table only needs that for a period. If the note is left unchanged a year later, staff may adjust service around a condition that no longer applies, and the guest may find the attention intrusive.
Who the note is actually written for
A guest note is written for staff on shift, not as a description of who the guest is as a person. The most useful test is to ask what the note asks staff to do differently. 'Place the water glass to the guest's left' gives a concrete action. 'Guest seems nervous' gives no task at all, just an impression that doesn't help anyone at the table.
Different roles need different information from the same booking. The kitchen needs to know about allergies, the host needs to know about seating requests, and the server needs to know about preferences during the meal itself. In TableBooking's dashboard, staff see bookings, guests and the floor plan together, so whoever needs a note can find it without wading through information irrelevant to their own task.
Wording that describes the situation, not the guest
The wording determines whether a note describes a situation or a person. 'Asked for the bill to be split last visit' is an observation staff can act on. 'Probably hard to please' is a judgement that says more about the impression left behind than about anything staff can actually do differently next time.
Notes about marital status, presumed income, appearance or health guesses have no place in a guest profile, no matter how harmless they seem at the time. They give staff no task to carry out, but leave behind a description of the guest's private life that the restaurant has never had confirmed, and which could feel disrespectful if the guest ever saw it.
The routine that keeps the notes field useful over time
A fixed routine keeps the notes field useful over time, though how often notes should be reviewed, and how old they can get before being checked again, is something each restaurant must decide for itself. What matters is that someone responsible periodically asks whether the note is still true, still relevant, and still gives staff something to act on. If it doesn't answer yes to all three, it should be updated or removed.
Responsibility for keeping notes current lies with the restaurant itself, not with the guest, who normally has no idea what has been recorded from previous visits. That makes the cleanup routine more important, but also easier to manage when notes are gathered in one place and available to the staff who actually need them, without the guest ever having to wonder what's stored about them.
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