Hotpot restaurant marketing planner - voucher rule-hole checklist: five dispute-prone terms to walk through before the deal goes live

You are a marketing planner at a hotpot chain. Turn the pre-launch
voucher rule check into a checkable list: five dispute-prone terms
plus three launch actions. Write each term in three parts: what to
check / the classic blow-up when it's missing / how to write it so
there's no hole.

Term 1: broth coverage
□ Check: does "any base included" name which bases? Are the split
  pot, premium bases, and loaded bases excluded or upcharged - and
  by how much?
- Classic blow-up: guest orders the split pot and the cashier asks
  for the difference - "the voucher says ANY base"
- Hole-free wording: "includes standard bases [base list]; split
  and premium bases add [upcharge policy]" - the upcharge printed
  on the voucher face, not left for the register to explain

Term 2: party-size rule
□ Check: for sets priced by headcount, does the voucher say what
  happens when fewer people show - use as-is, convert, or refund?
- Classic blow-up: four-person set, three guests - cashier and
  guest both invent rules on the spot, and both feel cheated
- Hole-free wording: pick exactly one treatment (recommended:
  "use as-is and box the extra" or "swap to the 3-person set,
  difference refunded or collected") and use that one line
  everywhere

Term 3: blackout windows
□ Check: are weekends, holidays, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve -
  the big hotpot nights - excluded? Is the exclusion printed
  prominently on the voucher face rather than buried in a collapsed
  details section?
- Classic blow-up: refusal on a holiday, with the guest holding up
  the voucher face - nothing printed there, the store can't argue
- Hole-free wording: blackout windows on the first screen of the
  voucher; if you truly don't exclude, then don't - "holidays
  excluded" in fine print is a bad-review machine

Term 4: stacking rules
□ Check: can the deal stack with member pricing, stored-value
  payment, other in-store offers? One line per combination.
- Classic blow-up: cashier says no stacking, guest says platform
  support said yes - the two rulebooks collide, and the store
  always swallows the collision
- Hole-free wording: one unique rule such as "cannot combine with
  member pricing or other offers; the lower of the two applies" -
  and verify the platform page displays it identically before
  launch

Term 5: sold-out substitution
□ Check: when a set item runs out, what happens - equal-value swap,
  pro-rated refund, or nothing? Is it written?
- Classic blow-up: the sellout is already the store's fault; a rule
  that leaves the guest worse off on top of it is a double hit
- Hole-free wording: "sold-out items may be swapped at equal value
  or refunded pro-rata" - hand the initiative to the guest, and
  the cashier gets an executable stance on the spot

Three launch actions:
□ Hostile read-through: one person reads the entire voucher copy
  in a customer's voice only, hunting specifically for "this isn't
  spelled out" - list every question, fix each before the next step
□ Cashier execution dry-run: send the rule text to the cashier
  team and ask how they'd execute for three parties - grandparents
  in tow, extra guest added at the table, in a rush. Any clause
  the cashiers can't answer is a clause with a hole in it
□ Fallback stance pinned: pair every rule with its
  dispute-time fallback, and pin a register card that matches the
  voucher face exactly

Constraints:
- This checklist covers rule holes only - no promotion strategy,
  no pricing
- Quote no specific platform's rule text - each platform's current
  agreement governs
- [ ] figures and policies are set by the brand; do not invent them

Why it is written this way

The checklist's standing position is that disputes belong in the design phase: one class of voucher-copy hole can blow up at the register a hundred times, and a hundred cashier trainings, and still be cheaper to fix with one rewritten line of copy. The ceiling on cashier scripts is "defused on the spot"; the ceiling on clear voucher copy is "never happened" - a whole order of magnitude apart in cost. All five terms grow directly out of hotpot's particular fee and dining structure - base upcharges, headcount sets, holiday peaks, membership systems, sellouts - and none of them survives transfer to another format.

The cashier execution dry-run is the most valuable of the three launch actions. Planners can't self-audit their own copy clean: the person who wrote the rule knows what it was meant to say and can't read its ambiguity. But wherever the executor goes silent, there is genuinely a hole. Ask "how would you execute this for these three parties" literally, and the cashiers' silence is your defect list.

"Upcharge printed on the voucher, not left to the register" recurs throughout Term 1 because it is the single largest source of hotpot voucher disputes: "any base" reads to the guest as every base, and to the store as standard bases - that gap has to be seen at purchase time, not heard at settlement.

"Holidays excluded" in fine print gets named a bad-review machine because hotpot's holiday intent to dine out is the strongest all year - the moment of highest refusal density is exactly the moment that clause activates. If you exclude, exclude in large print; that is Term 3's entire position.

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