Guide · October 2, 2026

Naming your counters so staff and software agree

A counter collects three or four names - on the plan, on the menu, on the headset, in the system. Here is how to settle on one and make it stick.

A counter collects names it never asked for

By the time a venue opens, the same counter has often picked up four names. The site plan calls it Unit 3. The staff who work it call it the back bar. The menu a guest reads says Garden Bar. And whatever the ordering system was set up with - a short code somebody typed in a hurry - is the name a paid order is actually routed by. Nobody chose this. It accumulates, one person at a time.

It costs nothing on a quiet afternoon. It costs a great deal on a busy night, because every question that matters then is asked out loud and in words: which counter is that order at, which counter has stopped printing, where does this item come from. If the answer depends on who you ask, the question takes a second trip around the site at the moment nobody has one to spare.

Write the list down once, before anybody needs it

Pick one name per counter and make it the only one. Put the list where both the office and the floor can see it - a sheet at the ops desk and the same sheet taped inside each counter. A counter's name should then appear identically in four places: the menu the guest orders from, the ticket that prints at the counter, the rota, and whatever ops watches to know the counter is alive.

The software is stricter than the people are

Staff hear Garden Bar and garden bar as the same counter. Ordering systems generally do not. A counter and its items are identified by the exact text they were catalogued with, so a retyped name, an extra space, or a size folded into an item name where it used to be a separate choice is a new thing as far as routing is concerned. That is how an item can quietly stop arriving at the counter that makes it while still selling perfectly well on the menu.

So treat a rename as a change to the setup rather than a change to a label. Make it in one place, then put a real order through for that counter's busiest item and watch the ticket come out of the right machine before the doors open. A name that has only been changed on the menu has not been changed.

When a name has to change mid-event

Sometimes it must - a counter moves, a vendor is swapped out, two counters merge into one. Do it between services if there is any choice at all, and tell the floor in the same breath as you tell the system. A counter whose printed ticket says one thing while its staff say another will have guests sent to the wrong place by people who are trying to help.

Then keep the old name written beside the new one for the rest of the event. Guests will still ask for it, staff will still say it, and the tickets printed earlier in the night still carry it. A retired name is not gone until the last ticket carrying it has been collected.

See it on your venue's menu

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