The hours you are open and taking nothing.

A bar stays open twelve hours and sells in four. In the other eight the rent runs all the same, and there is somebody on the floor being paid to be there. Those hours produce not one line in any set of accounts, and that is where the month's margin goes.

The gap we see most often is the one between eleven and noon: breakfast is over, lunch has not started, and whoever walks in finds a counter with nothing to give them. Then there is the afternoon after lunch. And there is the venue that does lunch well and pulls the shutter down at six while people are leaving their offices.

Filling a time slot is worth more than what that slot takes: it buys you the customer for the next one.

The question changes. Instead of asking yourself what to put on the menu at four, ask yourself who you want coming back at eight.

Whoever finds you at noon because they were in a hurry and found something good is the same person choosing you tonight instead of the place next door. Whoever passes at six and finds an empty counter does not even try at eight. Time slots hold each other up, and that is why one line added to a dead slot returns more than its own receipt says.

In practice four things work, and none of them asks for another pair of hands.

Single-portion sandwiches in modified atmosphere sit in the display and last four to six weeks: you take out what you need and the rest does not expire on you. No morning prep, and the eleven o'clock counter stops being empty.

Pizzella covers the quick lunch and the aperitivo with an oven that fits in two square metres and asks for neither a pizza chef nor a flue: three minutes from freezer to board. At 230 grams it is the single portion, in the 350 gram Gran Pizzella it becomes a meal.

Portioned fried food holds the aperitivo and the after-dinner, because it is fried to order. And single-portion ready meals open lunch to venues with no kitchen: eight minutes from freezer to table.