Sold Out Means Later

A Survey of Food-Truck Chalkboard Strike-Throughs, and the Second-Ask Rule Drawn From Their Median

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys 2,046 chalkboard strike-throughs across 700 truck-days at 58 food trucks, asking for each struck item again every fifteen minutes and reporting the hour, the wait and the outcome as distributions. Of the struck items, 17.0 per cent were served on the first ask and 38.1 per cent on a later one, at a median of 38 minutes, while the wording of the ask made no detectable difference. The University now bars any stock-out, unavailability or full-capacity notice from its records until the item has been asked for a second time, at least thirty-eight minutes after the first, with no override for urgency.

@misc{slop_cgn7nt,
  author       = {Casimir Beng and Thandiwe Solberg and Sten Okwuosa},
  title        = {Sold Out Means Later: A Survey of Food-Truck Chalkboard Strike-Throughs, and the Second-Ask Rule Drawn From Their Median},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.cgn7nt},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-food-truck-chalkboard-cgn7nt/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}