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

[YourAgileBiscuit]

My autistic DD (13) will normally only drink milk when we are out in restaurants etc.

Some restaurants (including chain restaurants and pubs/carvery places) get a bit funny about it when she orders/asks for milk though. Even though they already have milk for the kitchen and for teas/coffees. We’ve had some restaurants outright refuse as well even though they have milk in the building.

Is it unreasonable to expect restaurants to be able to serve milk for a paying customer? Of course we pay for her milk, we are not asking for it for free!

I would say about 50% of places we go to get funny about it which I don’t understand as they already have milk in the building.

It's a 13 year old with a disability.

I think Costa, while a chain, is slightly different- 90% of their menu has milk in it. If they run out, they’ll have to shut up shop.

A chain restaurants or carvery, which is what the OP is describing, who serves a few hot drinks alongside their main menu which is hot dinners are unlikely to be running out for milk.

I think it would be really beneficial for you to educate yourself about Autism. Perhaps also ARFID as well (I know @YourAgileBiscuit hasn’t stated her dd has this but it may be relevant as it’s an associated food/drink issue) and it may help you to understand why your comment is extremely offensive when you describe this being about ‘wants not needs’

Staff who work in chain often place orders on iPads or apps and can’t always amend things or add in things which do not appear on their menu. They have no facility to thus add it to the bill or charge for it, if they can’t override the ordering system.

Yes I appreciate that but it’s still the same - it could be easily obtained and who would not want to be supportive when a customer has a specific need ?

My ds works in a cafe and he has to regularly run out to grab more milk if they are exceptionally busy

Ok. So do the very simple maths. If he runs out to grab a pint of milk, let's say it takes 15 minutes. Let's say he's paid £10 an hour and the milk costs 50p. So that milk has cost £3. Selling that milk to the op (add on 50p easily for the glass, washing it up etc) for £3.50 and they've made zero profit. Businesses aren't that interested in 0 profit.
But if that pint was for 20 cups of tea, at £2 each and thus £40 sales, then the run to the shop becomes worth it.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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!!

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.