To expect a restaurant to be able to do a pint of milk?

Well 70% of people think you are being unreasonable and some people have given some good suggestions.

Quite honestly most restaurants do not have the ability to ‘pop’ to the shops. They might even be cashless. Either accept that you cannot expect to just turn up to a place, order something that isn’t cost effective for the place to serve you with no notice or bring your own.

I was going to suggest this!

Milk has a shelf life of what 2 weeks? So they will have ordered in what they normally need for what's actually on their menu.

It’s not known for its rarity value though, is it? Unless the OP is going to a particular restaurant daily and her child drinks three pints each time, I can’t see it’s going to be a major ongoing problem.

Personally, I very much doubt an extra pint will tip a restaurant’s supply precariously close to the edge. I’d be very surprised if they’re managing their supply right down to the pint. It retails for about 80p in the supermarket; a restaurant will be paying less wholesale. They wouldn’t be so tight with their ordering as to run out to avoid the risk of an overspend of a couple of quid. Even if they had to run to the corner shop for an emergency pint or two, the mark-up they could charge would make it worth it.

I expect if OP was regularly going somewhere with her daughter, a similar situation might occur, whereby they'd get used to her requirements and be able to factor in her orders to their planning and budgeting. Seeing the accommodations your place has made kind of demonstrates why actually it is a big deal when a customer comes in on a more one-off basis and asks for a large quantity of an item unexpectedly! It's really cool that your pub does that for your regular.

This is a really good point about not actually being able to put it through the till.

And I should have said in this, yes we make a profit on it in our pub! It’s not causing us to make a loss.

I’ve been asked for milk when I worked in a chain pub that served food. The customer’s argument was that we had milk on the premises for coffee and tea and therefore should be able to serve it to their child.

The problems with that were:

• As it was a chain business with preset tills and pricing, I had no means of even putting a glass of milk on to someone’s bill, let alone knowing what price to charge.
• If I had put it through the till as something else, like a Coke or an orange juice, that would have fucked up our stock take.
• As we didn’t sell that much tea and coffee, we only kept a limited amount of milk on the premises, so serving a whole glass to one person would have depleted our stock quite a bit.
• Serving off-menu items was generally not acceptable to the brewery chain for various reasons.

In a less chainy type of place it’s very different of course, and much easier to be flexible.

It really depends on the restaurant. I'd not expect a fast food chain like KFC or a Frankie & Benny or Pizza Hut to be able to provide a pint of milk. They work within a range of fixed parameters and don't really have flexibility to go "off piste", and usually have to buy everything from the "approved" suppliers if not get stocks automatically ordered via the franchise ordering system based on till sales etc.

But anything half decent, like a privately owned restaurant or a good independent pub/restaurant, should be able to, as they're usually a lot more flexible and more likely to have management who have the discretion as to what they order, where they order it from, etc., so will probably have a broader range of stock in the kitchen, including drinks.

It's a bit like wanting to "customise" your food order in a chain - if, say, they have chicken with one kind of sauce, and beef with a different kind of sauce, they look at you as if you're an idiot if you ask for chicken with the sauce that comes with the beef. Yet in a private restaurant, that's usually not a problem, even asking for options that aren't even on the menu is often possible.

I appreciate where people are coming from as regards stocks held, but realistically, any half decent establishment is going to have extras of staples like milk - they'll be going through many "pints" of milk in a day (probably dozens), so their stock control really won't be so fine-tuned as to run out of milk for coffees if they "sell" a pint to a customer.

I think if they refuse, it's more likely down to "computer says no", i.e. they don't know how to run it through the till, rather than them genuinely not having enough pints of milk in the kitchen fridge!!

Chain restaurants probably have set rules and regulations on how and what they can stock/buy and how things can be replenished. There may be policies around it and they might not be able to just pop to the shop to replenish.
Not the same thing really, but I was once in a Sainsbury’s cafe and told I couldn’t have a bacon sandwich as they’d run out of bacon! They were in a * supermarket!!! I even offered to go and get it off the shelves myself but they weren’t allowed to use stock from the store.

@OhYesImgoingtosay Well that rather explains your insistence that everyone must give in to what you say then.

We all have individual needs. One person's needs is not more important than others - say the staff or owner of a restaurant need to make a viable business that does not have individuals running to the shops.

A pint? That's a lot.

It's clearly down to either not having enough stock, there not being a code for it on tills (which is how the vast majority of restaurants work nowadays), or staff members not having the authority to make an ad hoc decision to serve and charge for something not on the menu.

I'm autistic, and a support worker for autistic people. I get it, I really do, but it's not reasonable to expect every restaurant to serve a particular item just because it's in the building. They will have the quantities they've budgeted and planned for and not every establishment can have people nipping down the road for an extra pint of milk.

I'd say your best bet is ringing ahead and explaining the situation, that way everyone avoids hassle and disappointment.

Honestly all your story tells me is that OP asking for milk does indeed use up extreme amounts of the restaurant’s usual supply and whilst it’s lovely that you have done this for a regular customer there is no indication that OP is going to the same place regularly to ask for this- rather they are expecting this every different place they go.

Thankyou for this . It just shows how common sense and kindness is the best option !

But if it’s a busy place or a chain restaurant they can’t just be sending staff to the shop like it’s nothing. Some restaurants might not even have a need for much milk on site if they don’t cater to drinks like lattes and so on. It really depends on the place.

@YourAgileBiscuit your best bet is either calling in advance and/or taking the milk with you just in case.

I have an autistic child also with a penchant for milk.
She doesn’t enjoy restaurants so it’s not an issue we have encountered particularly.
However, she did go through a stage of taking milk to nursery in a reusable coffee cup to keep it cool for the day.

Could you do similar and offer to buy milk if the cafe would prefer or let her drink her own milk from home. If she doesn’t drink it out then it would stay cool enough to drink later in the day?

That's because it won't be a pint on the kids menu, it'll be a small 250ml glass at most, or a small carton.

It would probably be easier for you to bring your own milk for her in case.

That must be frustrating OP. Will she drink UHT milk? If so I'd always take a little carton with you and explain that you are happy to order milk if they can serve it but if you could give the uht milk you have with you.

If you had taken Colonel Hans Landa with you, this would not have been a problem.

Everyone on here should read my reply to
OP here about how we have dealt with a similar situation in our pub restaurant! If a restaurant really cares about its customers then they would find a way to make it work, especially if it’s just a one off as well.

You might be or you might not be as I have both myself and also dc with these conditions.

I see the point you’re trying to make but I’m seeing this as a scenario where morals are more important than profit.

We are talking about a child and a pint of milk, or a child being allowed to consume a pint of milk from home. It’s not going to cause any great harm to any business to accommodate either of these situations.

If I was getting a lot of push pack on my request, then I would start to wonder if maybe my request was the odd thing here, rather than the responses I get to my request.

I asked for a glass of milk for my toddler in a bar (train station bar where we were waiting for the night train), barman was unsure of what to charge but in the end decided to charge it as a glass of juice, which would be a similar cost to the bar.

I imagine I am far more informed on both ARFID and ASD than yourself.

It does not change the situation.

Having a disability is not a trump card that you play to get what you want.

ASD is not always considered a disability either - many consider it a neurodivergance, but it can depend on the individual and how it affects their life.

Presumably overworked staff who have been instructed to only serve the menu items that the restaurant sells and have better things to do than pop to the shop.

And that’s assuming the restaurant is anywhere near a shop that a staff member could pop to.