group-enquiry

---
name: group-enquiry
description: Turns a vague enquiry about a table for twelve into a reply that holds a table, gives one inclusive price per head, sets the deposit and the deadlines, and asks only the three questions that decide the booking. Use when group enquiries arrive by email, phone or DM and go quiet, or when your reply is a list of questions back.
---

# Win the party of twelve instead of losing it to the place that replied first

You give this the enquiry exactly as it arrived, however unhelpful: "Hi do you do big groups? About 12 of us, maybe a Friday in December, what's the price?" You also give it your menus, your deposit terms and what you can actually seat. You get back one reply that holds a specific table until a stated time, prices the evening as a total per head with nothing added later, sets the three dates the organiser has to hit, and asks three questions instead of nine. It also gives you the 48-hour follow-up, because that is where most of these bookings are actually lost.

## What it does

1. **Reply within the hour during trading, and never with a question.** A group organiser is messaging three or four venues on the same afternoon and will book the one that makes the decision easy. The failure mode is not a slow reply, it is a reply that hands the work back: what date, how many exactly, lunch or dinner, do you want the set menu. The organiser does not know yet, which is why they asked. So the first reply contains an answer, a held table and a price, and the questions come after that, at the bottom, marked as things that can be confirmed later. If the exact date is missing, pick the most likely one from what they said, hold it, and say plainly that you have held that and can move it.

2. **Hold a real table and put an expiry on the hold.** "We can hold table 14 for twelve people, 7pm on Friday 12 December, until 6pm this Thursday." A named table, a real time, a real deadline. This does three things: it makes the offer concrete, it gives the organiser something to take back to their group, and it gives you a reason to follow up that is not nagging. Put the hold in the diary as a hold with the expiry on it, and delete it when it expires rather than letting it rot, because a diary full of dead holds is how a venue turns away a booking for a table nobody is coming to.

3. **Price the evening as one number per head, with everything mandatory inside it.** The Competition and Markets Authority's price transparency guidance says a price "will be realistic, meaningful and attainable if the headline price includes all mandatory charges that consumers will need to pay to purchase the product", and is blunt about what does not escape that: describing a charge as an "extra service does not make it optional. If the consumer will have to pay the additional charge in order to purchase or receive the advertised product, it is a mandatory charge." Its list of mandatory charges expressly includes "purchase taxes (eg VAT)", "administration fees, however described, such as booking or processing fees" and "mandatory cover or service charges". So if your group bookings carry a compulsory 12.5% service charge or a room hire fee, it goes inside the per-head figure in this reply, not in a line underneath it.

4. **Say what the number includes and, in the same breath, what it does not.** Three courses, still and sparkling water, the room from 7pm to 11pm. Not included: drinks from the bar, cake cutting, anything after 11pm. The organiser is going to have to explain this price to eleven other people, several of whom will ask whether drinks are in it. A reply they can forward without editing is a reply that gets accepted. Write the exclusions as a short list rather than a paragraph, and never leave a cost the organiser will meet on the night unstated, because a surprise on the bill at the end of a party of twelve is the review that follows you around for a year.

5. **Put the deposit and the cancellation scale in this first reply, not in a later one.** The CMA's unfair contract terms guidance says a genuine deposit may be kept "as long as it operates as a binding reservation and the trader makes clear to the consumer at the earliest opportunity that a deposit is required, and the precise circumstances in which it would be non-refundable", and that "those circumstances must be clear and narrow". At the earliest opportunity means here, in the message with the price in it. Give the deposit as a total for the party and per head, give the free-cancellation date as a weekday and date, and give the scale as three rows. Hiding it until the organiser has agreed costs you the booking twice: once when they find out, and once when they tell the other eleven.

6. **Ask the allergy question now and promise the conversation on the night.** The Food Standards Agency's best practice guidance for non-prepacked food says it is best practice to "make allergen information easily available in writing for consumers and ensure staff are able to support this with a conversation", covering all 14 allergens. Crucially for a group, it says: "Where food in a restaurant has been pre-ordered (for example, for a large group booking) allergen information should also be discussed with individuals on the day, before the food is served. It may not be sufficient to rely only on information supplied in advance as ingredients could have changed or details been missed in the original order." So the reply asks the organiser to collect allergies with the pre-order, and it says a member of staff will check with each guest at the table. Do not let an organiser's spreadsheet be the last word on what somebody can eat.

7. **Ask only the three questions that change the answer, and put them last.** Those are: the occasion, whether they need the table for a fixed finish time, and whether anyone in the party has an allergy, intolerance or access need. Occasion changes what you offer and whether a cake arrives. A fixed finish changes whether you can turn the table. The third is the one above. Everything else, exact numbers, pre-orders, dietary detail, drinks, is a deadline in step 8 rather than a question now. A reply carrying nine questions reads as work, and the organiser answers the venue that sent three.

8. **Set three dates and name what happens at each.** Final numbers by a stated date, with the note that the deposit covers a drop of up to two people and the price per head is charged on the confirmed number after that. Pre-orders and dietary requirements by a stated date. Balance due on the night or in advance, whichever you actually do. Write them as dates, not as "two weeks before", and put them in a three-line block the organiser can paste into their own calendar. Groups fall apart on numbers, and a venue that never named a numbers deadline discovers on the day that four people dropped out and nobody thought to say.

9. **Write the 48-hour follow-up at the same time as the reply, and send it.** One short message, sent before the hold expires: the hold, the expiry, one line offering to move the date, and nothing else. Not a chase, not a discount, not a second copy of the price list. Most group enquiries that go quiet go quiet because the organiser is waiting for eleven other people, and a single message that makes it easy to say "can we move it to the 19th" recovers a booking that would otherwise have been lost to silence. Write it now, because nobody writes it on the day.

## Then it checks

1. The reply contains a specific date, a specific time, a named or numbered table and a hold expiry written as a weekday, date and clock time.
2. One inclusive price per head is stated, and no mandatory charge, service charge, room hire, booking fee or VAT sits outside it anywhere in the message.
3. The reply lists what the price includes and what it excludes, and every cost the party will meet on the night appears in one list or the other.
4. The deposit is given as both a per-head and a party total, the free-cancellation date is a weekday and date, and the cancellation scale has at least three rows and ascends.
5. Exactly three questions are asked, they appear below the price and the hold, and each is answerable in one line.
6. The three deadlines are written as calendar dates rather than relative periods, and each says what happens if it is missed.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is: the reply is signed by a real person at the venue with a direct contact route.
- Never quote a price per head with a mandatory charge outside it. The CMA's guidance is that a charge the consumer cannot avoid is mandatory however it is described, and a group organiser who discovers a 12.5% addition after briefing eleven people will cancel rather than explain it.
- Never hold a table you cannot seat. A hold that turns out not to exist costs more than a refusal, and the organiser has already told the party it is booked.
- Never let a pre-order sheet be the final word on an allergy. The FSA's guidance is explicit that information supplied in advance may not be sufficient and should be discussed with individuals on the day, and a group is exactly where a name and a dish get separated.
- Never send a discount to rescue a quiet enquiry. It teaches organisers to go quiet, and it prices your December against the venue that did not blink.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor, accountant or environmental health officer to check before it is used at volume, particularly the deposit wording, the inclusive price and the allergen handling. It drafts a reply; it is not legal advice, tax advice or a food safety assessment.

## Built from
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices: price transparency, CMA209", https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691b10065a253e2c40d705d9/Price_transparency_-_CMA209_.pdf, published 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: paragraphs 3.3, 4.3 and 4.4 on total price and what counts as a mandatory charge, including cover and service charges, which is the whole of step 3 and check 2.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair contract terms, CMA37", https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f8b58ed915d74e33f716e/Unfair_Terms_Main_Guidance.pdf, 22 July 2026, read 14 September 2026: paragraph 6.62 on telling the consumer at the earliest opportunity and keeping the non-refundable circumstances clear and narrow, which puts the deposit into the first reply in step 5, and 6.64 on the ascending sliding scale behind check 4.
- Food Standards Agency, "Allergen information for non-prepacked foods: best practice", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/allergen-information-for-non-prepacked-foods-best-practice/allergen-information-for-non-prepacked-foods-best-practice, published 24 February 2025, read 14 September 2026: paragraph 28 on written information supported by a conversation and paragraph 50 on group pre-orders needing to be checked with individuals on the day, which set step 6 and the sixth rule.
- ResDiary, "Beyond the Booking: UK & IE Hospitality Industry Report 2024", https://resdiary.com/industry-insights/uk-ie-hospitality-industry-report-2024, no publication date shown on the page, read 14 September 2026: the finding across 175 surveyed venues that "more than half (51%) required a deposit for a certain number of covers" with an average trigger of nine covers, which is why a party of twelve is treated as a deposit booking by default in step 5.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 64 and Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/64 and https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/schedule/2, as enacted, read 14 September 2026: the prominence standard behind putting the deposit above the fold rather than in an attachment, and grey list paragraph 4, which is why the cancellation scale in the reply also states what happens if the venue cancels.

# group-enquiry

## You are given
A folder from a UK hospitality venue containing the group enquiries exactly as they arrived, as forwarded emails, screenshots, DM text dumps or notes from a call, most of them vague about the date and the numbers. Plus the venue's menus with prices, a VAT position, any room hire or cover charge, the service charge percentage and whether it is compulsory or discretionary, a table and capacity list showing what can seat which party size, a diary extract for the dates in question, the deposit terms and cancellation scale, and the name, role and direct contact of the person the replies are signed by.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `price-build.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `component`, `amount_gbp`, `basis`, `mandatory`, `included_in_headline`, `source_file`. `basis` is `per_head`, `per_party` or `percent_of_food_and_drink`. One row per component: set menu, VAT, room hire, cover charge, compulsory service charge, booking fee. A final row per enquiry with `component` set to `INCLUSIVE PRICE PER HEAD` carrying the computed total. Every row where `mandatory` is `yes` must have `included_in_headline` set to `yes`.
2. `enquiries-GUEST-DATA.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `received_at`, `channel`, `organiser_name`, `organiser_contact`, `party_size`, `requested_date`, `requested_date_source`, `requested_time`, `table_or_area_held`, `hold_created`, `hold_expires`, `inclusive_price_per_head_gbp`, `deposit_per_head_gbp`, `deposit_party_total_gbp`, `final_numbers_date`, `preorder_date`, `balance_due_date`. `requested_date_source` is `stated_by_organiser` or `chosen_from_diary`. Every date is a weekday plus DD Month YYYY.
3. `cancellation-scale.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `notice_band`, `organiser_pays_gbp`, `organiser_pays_pct_of_deposit`, `venue_cancels_refund_gbp`, `venue_cancels_refund_by`. At least three bands per enquiry, ascending, and no band where the organiser pays more than the deposit total.
4. `includes-excludes.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `item`, `included`, `amount_if_extra_gbp`, `source_file`. Every cost the party will meet on the night appears in this file with `included` set to `yes` or `no`.
5. `replies-GUEST-DATA/reply-<enquiry_ref>.txt` and `followup-48h-<enquiry_ref>.txt`, one pair per enquiry. The reply carries the hold, the inclusive price, the includes and excludes, the deposit, the scale, the three dates, then exactly three questions at the bottom. The follow-up carries the hold, the expiry, one line offering to move the date, and nothing else.
6. `hold-register.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `table_or_area`, `seats`, `held_for_date`, `held_for_time`, `hold_created`, `hold_expires`, `released`, `capacity_source_file`.
7. `deadline-check.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `deadline_name`, `calendar_date`, `what_happens_if_missed`, `written_as_relative_period`. `written_as_relative_period` must be `no` on every row.
8. `exceptions.csv` with columns: `enquiry_ref`, `missing_field`, `what_it_blocks`, `source_file`.
9. `README.md` - the enquiries read, the inclusive price per head for each with its components listed, the three dates per enquiry, and every enquiry held.

## Rules
- Write drafts to files only. Never send an email, a DM or a platform message, never reply in a platform inbox, and never place, amend or confirm a booking in a diary system. The hold register is a file for the venue to enter by hand.
- No mandatory charge may sit outside the headline price per head. Compute the inclusive figure from `price-build.csv` and state it once. A discretionary service charge stays outside it, described with its percentage and how a guest removes it.
- Never hold a table the supplied capacity list does not show as able to seat that party on that date. If nothing fits, leave `table_or_area_held` empty, set the row in `exceptions.csv`, and draft no hold.
- Every price, capacity, deposit and date must come from a supplied file. A missing figure is written as `[MISSING: field name]` in the draft and listed in `exceptions.csv`. Never invent a menu price, a room hire, a capacity or a contact.
- Every deadline is a weekday and a calendar date. Never write a relative period such as two weeks before, and never carry a date forward from a previous enquiry.
- Exactly three questions per reply, placed below the price and the hold, each answerable in one line: the occasion, whether a fixed finish time is needed, and whether anyone has an allergy, intolerance or access need. Count them and record any reply with a different count in `exceptions.csv`.
- Every reply says a member of staff will check allergies with each guest at the table on the night, and never treats a pre-order sheet as the last word.
- Never draft a discount, a price reduction or a sweetener into a follow-up.
- Every reply is signed by the real person, role and direct contact given in the inputs, so it is clear whose name it is sent in.
- Organiser names and contact details appear only in the files whose names end `-GUEST-DATA`. Never copy them into `price-build.csv`, `hold-register.csv` or `README.md`.
- Money in pounds to two decimal places. British English, £, DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes, no emoji.

## Return
The absolute paths of the files written, the enquiries read, the inclusive price per head for each with its components, the three deadline dates per enquiry, any row in `price-build.csv` where a mandatory charge sat outside the headline before correction, every enquiry with no table that fits, and every value written as missing. State that these are drafts for the owner to read and send, that no table has been held and nothing has been sent, and that the deposit wording, the inclusive price and the allergen handling are for the owner's solicitor, accountant or environmental health officer to check before use at volume.