Stop cooking for empty doorsteps: a simple leave policy for your tiffin service

Almost every tiffin provider has the same story. You cook the full batch, pack the boxes, reach the building, and the customer is in another city. Nobody told you. The food is wasted and the next argument is about whether this day goes on the bill.

The cause is rarely a bad customer. It is the absence of a clear, easy way to say "I'm away". A leave message sent on a busy chat gets buried. A phone call at 7 am catches you mid-cooking. A good leave policy fixes this in three small steps.

1. Decide your cut-off time, and say it once

Pick a time by which a leave must be told so you can avoid buying and cooking for it. Many kitchens choose the evening before, because grocery and prep decisions are made then. Others allow same-day cancellation until early morning.

There is no single right answer. Pick the one that matches when you actually buy and start cooking. If you buy vegetables the evening before, a morning cut-off does not protect you.

In MyTiffin this is a setting: *Settings → Customer leave*. By default customers can mark leave from tomorrow onwards. You can allow cancelling today's tiffin until a chosen hour.

2. Decide what happens to the bill

Write down one rule and keep it. A few common options:

• Leave told before the cut-off: not billed. Simple and fair, and the one customers usually expect.
• Leave told late: billed. You already cooked and bought.
• Long leave (for example a week or more): you may pause the subscription and restart on the return date.

Whatever you choose, put it in your first welcome message. Most disputes happen only because the rule was never stated.

3. Give customers one easy place to tell you

The best leave system is the one the customer will actually use. A form they fill in on their own phone, in ten seconds, with a first and last day, beats any chat message.

With MyTiffin, each customer can log in with their phone number or use a personal link. They pick the days, and:

• your box count for those days drops automatically,
• you get a Telegram message the moment they mark it (see how to set up Telegram),
• the days appear in your monthly report, so billing is easy to explain.

4. Handle the "I forgot to tell you" customer gracefully

It will still happen. When it does, don't improvise. Apply the rule you wrote, once, kindly. If you choose to make an exception, call it an exception and say so. Customers respect clear rules more than they resent them.

A tiny checklist

1. Choose your cut-off time.
2. Write the billing rule in two lines.
3. Send both to every new customer.
4. Give customers a self-service way to mark leave.
5. Check tomorrow's count every evening before you shop.

That last step is the one that saves money. When the number of boxes you need is always in front of you, you stop guessing.