Table service arrived in British pubs almost overnight, and a good number of them never went back. The ones that kept it did so for a plain reason: people at a table who can order without standing up order more, and a landlord with two staff on can cover a garden that used to need three.

What the bar is still for

Nobody wants a pub where you cannot stand at the bar. The bar is the pub. Table ordering is for the garden, the snug, the upstairs room and the tables in the corner where catching an eye takes five minutes on a Friday.

Run both and the room sorts itself out. Drinkers stand, eaters sit, and neither queue is made of the other.

Order at the table, pay at the bar

Taking payment through a phone brings in card fees on every round, a percentage on the wet sales, and a stack of refunds when a table changes its mind. Sending the order through and settling the bill at the till the way you always have keeps the takings where you can see them.

It also keeps the service charge conversation where it belongs — with a person, at the end, in the room.

The words on the menu

• Starters and mains, not appetisers and entrées.
• Chips are chips. Crisps are crisps. Do not make anyone guess.
• The bill, never the check.
• Say whether service is added, and say it before somebody asks.
• Takeaway on the menu, and put the collection time on it.

Food times and last orders

The kitchen closing at nine while the bar runs to eleven is the most common shape in the country, and it is where table ordering goes wrong. Set the kitchen hours so the food stops going through at nine and the drinks carry on. Otherwise the last two hours of every night arrive as tickets nobody can cook.

The garden

Start there if you start anywhere. The garden is furthest from the bar, hardest to watch, and the place where the second round quietly does not happen. Put codes on those tables, leave the rest of the pub exactly as it is, and you will know inside a fortnight whether it belongs in your room.

The point is not to empty the bar. It is to stop the far table giving up on a second round.