delivery-menu

---
name: delivery-menu
description: Turns your dining room menu, your kitchen timings, your packaging list and a measured delivery journey into a menu built for the trip: every dish scored on how it survives twenty minutes in a box, the dishes taken off, the dishes changed, the holding and reheating temperatures written down, the descriptions rewritten so they still describe what arrives, and the VAT consequence of every change recorded. Use before you copy your restaurant menu onto an app or your own ordering page, or after the refunds start saying cold, soggy or not as described.
---

# A delivery menu where every dish still works after twenty minutes in a box, and the ones that do not are off it

You give this your current menu, the kitchen timings for each dish, your packaging list, the temperatures you hold and reheat at, and a real measured journey time from your busiest delivery hour. You get back a dish by dish survival assessment, the list of dishes removed and the list changed, the written temperature position, descriptions rewritten so they still match what arrives at the door, and a note of every change that moved a dish between VAT treatments. It will not tell you which dishes sell best on delivery. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue, and a menu built from somebody else's bestsellers is a menu built for somebody else's kitchen.

## What it does

1. **Measure the journey before you judge a single dish.** Take the time from the moment the food leaves the pass to the moment the customer opens the box, not the platform's quoted delivery estimate. Do it at your busiest hour, at least ten times, and write down the range rather than the average, because the dish has to survive the worst trip and not the typical one. Deliveroo's own partner terms treat fifteen minutes as the line at which a temperature complaint becomes the platform's cost rather than yours, which tells you how long they expect the carry to take and how much of the total time is yours to control. Everything after this step is measured against the number you just wrote down.

2. **Fix the temperature position in writing, because it is the one thing in this skill that is a legal duty and not a preference.** Schedule 4 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 makes it an offence to keep food "at or in food premises at a temperature above 8°C" where chill holding is required, and an offence to keep at a temperature "below 63°C" food which "needs to be kept at or above 63°C in order to control the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms or the formation of toxins". The Regulations allow limited service tolerances, a period "of less than four hours" above 8°C for food on display or for service, and for hot food a period "of less than two hours" where it had not previously been kept for service. Write down which of your dishes are chilled, which are hot held, what the holding temperature is, and how long a dish may sit before it is refused.

3. **Score every dish against the journey, using four physical failure modes and not an opinion.** The four that actually destroy delivery food are steam, which turns anything crisp to cloth; separation, where an emulsion or a dressing breaks or a sauce pools; temperature loss, where a thin or wide dish drops faster than a dense one; and structural collapse, where the dish is carried at an angle. Score each dish against each mode on the measured journey, and record the evidence, which is usually somebody actually putting the dish in a box, leaving it for the measured time and opening it. A tasting at the pass proves nothing about a dish that has been in a bag on a moped.

4. **Take dishes off rather than apologising for them.** The instinct is to keep the whole menu and add a note. The result is a customer who ordered the thing you knew would fail. A dish that fails on two or more modes comes off the delivery menu and stays on the dining room menu, and the reason is recorded next to it so that nobody puts it back in three months. This is also the cheapest possible improvement to your refund rate, because it removes the orders you were always going to lose money on before the customer ever places them.

5. **Change what can be changed, and record the change as a change.** A dish that fails on one mode can often be fixed: separate the sauce into a pot, take the crisp element out and sell it as a side, cut the portion so the box closes flat, or switch the cooking so it finishes hotter. Write the delivery specification for the changed dish separately from the dining room specification, with its own portion weight and its own build order. Two specifications for one dish name is how a kitchen ends up sending the dining room version into a box at eight o'clock on a Saturday, so the delivery version needs its own ticket wording.

6. **Check whether the change moved the dish between VAT treatments, because two of the five tests are things you are about to do.** VAT Notice 709/1 standard rates hot takeaway food that has "been heated for the purposes of enabling it to be consumed hot", has "been heated to order", has "been kept hot after being heated", is "provided to a customer in packaging that retains heat, or in any other packaging that is specifically designed for hot food", or is "advertised or marketed in a way that indicates that it's supplied hot". Steps 5 and 7 touch the fourth and fifth tests directly. Meanwhile "Cold takeaway food and drink is zero-rated, as long as it's not of a type that's always standard-rated". Record every dish whose VAT treatment changed and hand the list to whoever runs your commission-maths file.

7. **Rewrite the description so it describes what arrives, not what leaves.** Article 7 of Regulation 1169/2011 requires that food information "shall not be misleading" as to the nature, identity, properties or composition of the food, requires that it "shall be accurate, clear and easy to understand for the consumer", and extends the same duty to advertising and to presentation. CAP Code rule 3.7 adds the evidence burden: "Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation." So crispy, seared, melted and freshly carved each have to be true at the door and not at the pass. Strike the word or change the dish. There is no third option that survives a complaint.

8. **Write the reheating and finishing instruction for the customer where one is needed, and only where it is honest.** If a dish genuinely benefits from two minutes in an oven, say so on the label in one short line. Do not use a customer instruction to cover a dish that fails the journey, because the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats every contract to supply goods as including a term that "the quality of the goods is satisfactory", measured by what "a reasonable person would consider satisfactory", and a customer who has to rescue their dinner did not get that. A finishing instruction is a feature on a dish that works and an excuse on one that does not.

9. **Hand the assessment to Codex to build the menu files.** Every judgement is already made: the scores, the removals, the changes and the descriptions are the owner's and the head chef's. Run:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over the measured journey times, the dish list with the four scores and the evidence, the removals and changes, the temperature positions, the VAT status before and after, and the rewritten descriptions exactly as the owner wrote them. Codex returns the survival matrix, the removed and changed lists, the delivery specification sheet, the VAT change list and a gaps file. Codex does not write a description and does not score a dish.

10. **Publish the delivery menu as its own document with its own date.** It is not the dining room menu with items hidden. It has its own dish list, its own portion weights, its own build order, its own allergen matrix from the allergen-on-delivery skill, and a date in the footer showing when the journey was measured and when the prices were read. Put a review trigger on it in writing: measure the journey again if you change platform, change area, or start taking orders yourself, because all three change the number that every decision in this file was made against.

## Then it checks

1. The measured journey time is recorded as a range from at least ten real orders at the venue's busiest hour, and the date and hour of the measurement are stated.
2. Every dish on the delivery menu carries a score against all four failure modes, and each score names the physical test that produced it rather than an opinion.
3. Every dish removed from the delivery menu has its reason recorded, and every dish changed has a separate delivery specification with its own portion weight and build order.
4. The file states a holding temperature for every hot held and chilled dish, and states the maximum time a dish may sit before it is refused.
5. Every dish whose VAT treatment changed as a result of a packaging or marketing change is listed, with the test from VAT Notice 709/1 that moved it.
6. Every adjective in every delivery description is either plain and unfalsifiable or is matched to a physical check performed on a dish that had completed the measured journey.

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.
- Never state a typical delivery journey time, a typical share of orders by dish, a benchmark refund rate or a best selling delivery category for an independent venue. No published figure exists for a single site, the lists that circulate are aggregated from chains, and an owner who builds a menu on them removes a dish their own customers were ordering.
- Never keep a dish on the delivery menu because it is a signature dish. The customer does not get the signature dish, they get what is left of it twenty minutes later, and that is what they will review.
- Never fix a failing dish with a customer instruction. The instruction is only honest on a dish that already works.
- Never let one dish name carry two builds without two written specifications. A kitchen under pressure sends the build it knows, and the build it knows is the dining room one.
- Never change packaging or a dish description without checking the VAT consequence in the same session. Two of the five hot food tests are packaging and marketing, and a menu change can move a dish between treatments without anybody noticing until the return.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check with their head chef on the specifications, their environmental health officer on the temperature positions and allergen handling, their accountant on any VAT treatment that changed, and their trade body or solicitor on any claim in the copy. It applies published rules to a draft menu. It is not food safety verification and it is not a ruling that the menu complies.

## Built from
- The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, SI 2013/2996, Schedule 4, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2996/schedule/4/made, read 23 September 2026: the 8 degree chill holding and 63 degree hot holding offences and the four hour and two hour service tolerances in step 2.
- The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, SI 2013/2996, regulation 19, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2996/regulation/19/made, read 23 September 2026: that a contravention of the specified provisions is an offence, which is why step 2 is written before any dish decision.
- HM Revenue and Customs, "Catering, takeaway food (VAT Notice 709/1)", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/catering-takeaway-food-and-vat-notice-7091, updated 8 June 2026, read 23 September 2026: the five hot food tests and the zero rating of cold takeaway food in step 6.
- Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, Article 7, as it applies in the United Kingdom, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2011/1169/article/7, read 23 September 2026: the fair information practices test applied to delivery descriptions in step 7.
- Committee of Advertising Practice, CAP Code (Edition 12), Section 3 "Misleading advertising", https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/03.html, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: rule 3.7 on documentary evidence for objective claims in step 7.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 9, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/9, read 23 September 2026: the satisfactory quality term applied to a dish that needs rescuing, in step 8.
- Deliveroo, "Deliveroo Partners Terms and Conditions", https://merchants.deliveroo.com/en-GB/legal/terms, page states last updated 14 January 2021 with later dated sections, read 23 September 2026: the fifteen minute line at which a temperature complaint becomes the platform's cost, used in step 1 to frame the measurement.
- Food Standards Agency and GOV.UK, "Food safety for food delivery", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-safety-for-food-delivery/food-safety-for-food-delivery, published 26 March 2020, read 23 September 2026: the insulated packing requirement for hot and chilled food, in steps 2 and 5.

# delivery-menu

## You are given
The measured journey times for one UK hospitality business, being at least ten timed records from the pass to the customer opening the box, each with the date, the hour and the elapsed minutes, and the busiest hour the owner measured in. The full current menu with every dish name exactly as it is printed, its course, its dining room portion weight and its dining room price. For every dish, the owner's or head chef's score against four named failure modes, being steam, separation, temperature loss and structural collapse, each recorded as pass, marginal or fail, and the physical test that produced each score. The owner's decision for every dish, recorded as keep, change or remove, with the reason. For every changed dish, the separate delivery specification supplied by the head chef, with portion weight, build order and any component moved to a pot or a side. The holding position for every dish, being chilled or hot held, with the temperature and the maximum time before refusal. The VAT status of every dish before and after any change, decided by the owner, with the VAT Notice 709/1 test named where it is standard rated. The rewritten delivery descriptions exactly as the owner wrote them, and for each adjective the physical check that supports it or the note that none exists. The packaging item attached to each dish. All judgement calls, including every score, every removal, every changed specification and every word of every description, have already been made by the owner and are supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./delivery-menu-output/` folder:

1. `journey-times.csv` with these columns in this order: `record_ref`, `date`, `hour`, `platform_or_channel`, `minutes_pass_to_open`, `measured_by`, `notes`. One row per timed record. A `SUMMARY` row carries the minimum, the maximum and the count, with the mean recorded in a separate `mean_minutes` column on that row only and never used as the design figure.
2. `survival-matrix.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `dish_name_verbatim`, `course`, `steam`, `separation`, `temperature_loss`, `structural_collapse`, `fail_count`, `test_performed`, `tested_after_minutes`, `decision`. `dish_ref` is D001 upward. Each of the four mode columns is exactly `pass`, `marginal`, `fail` or `not tested`. `decision` is exactly one of `keep`, `change`, `remove`, `not decided`. Every `not tested` cell and every `not decided` row is listed in `gaps.md`.
3. `removed-dishes.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `dish_name_verbatim`, `fail_count`, `modes_failed`, `reason_verbatim`, `stays_on_dine_in_menu`, `date_removed`. `stays_on_dine_in_menu` is `yes` or `no`.
4. `delivery-specifications.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `dish_name_verbatim`, `delivery_portion_weight`, `dine_in_portion_weight`, `build_order_verbatim`, `components_moved_to_pot`, `components_sold_as_side`, `ticket_wording_verbatim`, `differs_from_dine_in`. `differs_from_dine_in` is `yes` or `no`. Every row where `differs_from_dine_in` is `yes` and `ticket_wording_verbatim` is empty is listed in `gaps.md`.
5. `temperature-positions.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `dish_name_verbatim`, `holding_type`, `holding_temperature_c`, `maximum_minutes_before_refusal`, `packaging_ref`, `source_of_position`. `holding_type` is exactly one of `chilled`, `hot held`, `ambient`, `not stated`. Every row with `not stated` or an empty temperature is listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `vat-changes.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `dish_name_verbatim`, `vat_status_before`, `vat_status_after`, `changed`, `test_named`, `change_that_caused_it`. `vat_status_before` and `vat_status_after` are each exactly one of `standard rated`, `zero rated`, `not registered`, `not stated`. `changed` is `yes` or `no`. `test_named` is exactly one of `heated to be consumed hot`, `heated to order`, `kept hot after heating`, `packaging retains heat`, `marketed as supplied hot`, `none`, `not stated`.
7. `description-claims.csv` with columns: `dish_ref`, `word_or_phrase_verbatim`, `claim_type`, `true_at_the_door`, `physical_check_performed`, `checked_after_minutes`, `substantiated`. `claim_type` is exactly one of `texture`, `temperature`, `freshness`, `provenance`, `method of production`, `superlative`, `plain description`. `true_at_the_door` and `substantiated` are `yes`, `no` or `not tested`. Rows marked `plain description` need no check.
8. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every dish with a mode scored `not tested`; every dish with no decision; every changed dish with no separate specification or no ticket wording; every dish with no holding temperature; every description claim with no physical check; every dish with no packaging item attached; if fewer than ten journey records were supplied, that shortfall with the count; and any figure the owner supplied without a date.

## Rules
- Codex tabulates, counts, compares and records. It never scores a dish, never decides to keep or remove one, never writes or edits a description or a ticket line, never sets a temperature, and never decides a VAT status. Those were supplied.
- Never estimate a missing value. A dish with no score on a mode carries `not tested` and a line in `gaps.md`. A part scored menu reports its fail counts as incomplete rather than as a total.
- Never use the mean journey time as a design figure. The maximum is the figure every decision is measured against, and the mean is recorded once on the `SUMMARY` row for reference only.
- Never write a typical journey time, a benchmark refund rate, a share of orders by dish or category, or any industry figure into any file. No such figure exists for a single independent UK venue and none is to be recorded.
- Never mark a description claim `substantiated` from the dish name, the recipe or the owner's confidence. Only a recorded physical check performed on a dish that had completed the measured journey supports `yes`.
- Never merge a delivery specification into a dining room specification or overwrite one with the other. Where the two differ, both are recorded in full in separate columns.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, DD Month YYYY dates, and temperatures written in degrees Celsius. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every dish name, build order, ticket line and description is copied exactly as supplied, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check with their head chef on the specifications, their environmental health officer on the temperature positions, their accountant on any VAT treatment that changed, and their trade body or solicitor on any claim in the copy. It applies supplied rules to a draft menu and is not food safety verification or a ruling that the menu complies.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the minimum and maximum journey times and the number of records they came from, the count of dishes scored on all four modes and the count with at least one `not tested`, the number of dishes removed and their names, the number of dishes changed and how many of those have a separate ticket wording, the number of dishes with no holding temperature, the list of dishes whose VAT status changed with the test named for each, the count of description claims with no physical check, and the `gaps.md` item count.