Hey all,
You may have remembered some old posts where I had asked for advice about my in-laws' restaurant and them selling it. This was all back in early 2019 and the new owner has been in charge since (and has really run the place down per many Yelp reviews). Anyway, my wife pretty much grew up as "supplemental help" at her parents' restaurant her whole life, and supported them in various ways: manning the front, taking orders on the phone and placing them through the archaic ordering system, updating menu prices and tax rates in the system, etc.
Well, the current owner of the restaurant reached out to my wife a few days ago asking for some follow-up on some escrow documents (not my wife's or my in-laws' problem) that she needed for tax filing but in the same conversation requested information about how to update menu pricing (not my wife's or my in-laws' problem - she's still using the archaic system and could have decided to replace it). My wife gave her that info and she just responded again now asking how to update the tax rate. The knowledge is somewhat 'siloed' in that pretty much my wife is the only one knows how to do it. My wife is insisting that she just go in and take care of it as it will only take 10-15 minutes.... could be the case but we all know how those things go. BTW: from her parents house it's a 20 minute drive each way, so there's that...
What do you guys think? Should she just do this as a "one time courtesy" and if the owner asks for more favors, tell her that she'll need to bill her for her time? My wife thinks this is a "necessary" thing to do out of obligation because they sold the restaurant to the new owner - I told her that all this is the new owner's problem and she very well had the ability to move off of this system and onto another but chose not to. Per the contract, I think she was extended anywhere from 1-3 months of 'support' to help with the transition - it was during this time that she should have figured all this stuff out.