“Second,” she said. “The menu. Not the food. The menu.”
I relaxed. “You are not touching the food.”
“Never,” she said. “I value my life.”
She tapped the page. “Same dishes. Better order. Breakfast grouped together. Daily specials stop hiding. They get their own space.”
“That would help,” I said. “People miss them.”
“Because they are buried,” she said. “This way they get seen and ordered before noon.”
She kept going. “Seasonal insert. One page. Slides in and out. No full reprints. No crying in the back office.”
I smiled. “I have cried in the back office.”
“Everyone has.”
She pointed at a circled line. “Descriptions stay short. Honest. No poetry.”
I read it out loud. “‘Fluffy pancakes. Real butter. No regrets.’”
“That is accurate,” she said.
“It is,” I said.
“It sounds like you,” she said. “Just easier to read.”
She turned another page.
“Third,” she said. “Visual cleanup.”
I raised a brow. “Define cleanup.”
“The lighthouse stays. The colors stay. The soul stays,” she said. “We stop using six fonts that hate each other.”
I laughed. “They do fight.”
“Signs match. Menus match. Takeout menus stop looking like they came from three decades.”
“That explains the green one.”
“And the beige one,” she said. “And the one that smells like a basement.”
I crossed my arms and looked around the diner. “You think people notice.”
“They notice when it is wrong,” she said. “They do not notice when it is right.”
I nodded. “And it makes the place feel cared for.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Even if the floor squeaks and the stools wobble.”
I tapped the table. “I like it.”
She closed her notebook. “Good. I already started fixing the fonts.”
I laughed. “I’m not surprised.”
“You were wasted in New York,” I said.
