The phone is still ringing.

Almost nobody does, and it is usually the largest single leak in a takeaway. Your phone provider can normally give you missed call counts by hour. Look at your busiest three hours on a Friday. Whatever that number is, multiply by your average order value, and you have the cost of the problem in cash. It is usually enough to justify changing something.

A repeat customer should be a few taps: their number comes up, their last order comes with it, confirm and send. Retyping a name, an address and six items on a busy night is where the queue on the phone builds, and it is where mistakes get made. This single change usually halves phone order entry time.

Whoever is answering should not also be plating. It sounds obvious and it is the most common arrangement in small kitchens at exactly the wrong time. Even moving the phone to the counter, with one person owning it through the rush, changes the answer rate significantly.

The cheapest way to fix phone capacity is to move some of it online, where there is no queue at all. Tell callers, on hold and on the receipt, that ordering online is faster and shows a live time. Some will switch, and each one frees the line for somebody who will not.

A meaningful share of customers will always prefer to phone, and telling them to use a website is a good way to lose them. The goal is to serve phone orders well and reduce the volume enough that the line is answerable, not to eliminate them.