Allergies, diets and access: the details that arrive late and cannot be improvised

Collect in the guest's words, never in categories

"Vegetarian" covers people who eat fish and people who will not eat food cooked in the same oil. "Nut allergy" covers a preference and an anaphylactic risk. The assistant's job is to capture exactly what was written, not to translate it into a tick-box, because the translation is where the severity disappears. A kitchen can work with a sentence; it cannot work with a category that has lost the distinction that mattered.

Never confirm that a requirement can be met

Whether the kitchen can produce a genuinely gluten-free service without cross-contamination, or whether the venue can get a wheelchair to the top table on that floor plan, are operational facts somebody has to check. An assistant that says "that's no problem" has committed the venue in a way that may be discovered at the event. The correct behaviour is to record it, confirm it has been received, and name who will confirm feasibility and by when.

Access is a building question, and vagueness is the failure

"Is the venue accessible?" deserves specifics rather than yes: step-free entry or how many steps, lift dimensions, accessible WC location and whether it is on the event floor, hearing-loop presence, where a wheelchair space sits relative to the top table. These are fixed facts about the building and publishing them precisely saves a site visit for the guest who most needs one.

The arrival time of the information is the dispute

Almost every argument about a missed requirement is about when the venue was told. An assistant that records each requirement with a timestamp and sends a confirmation naming what was received protects the guest and the venue equally - and it removes the common failure where a requirement was mentioned once, verbally, to someone who left. Decide before launch where that record lands and who reads it the week of the event.