Section 1 — Why this recipe exists

It's Sunday night, or it's 6:40am Monday, and you owe your district managers an email. You know roughly what you want to say — the Westgate store had a rough week, Riverside is worth celebrating, somebody needs to explain the Sunday dinner drop — but turning that into a clean five-sentence email is the kind of small task that somehow eats 45 minutes you don't have. Here's the move. If you already had Claude read last week's report, the draft is one prompt away. Tested in our own kitchen, used by Expo customers running 8 to 70 locations. This is the second recipe in a two-part Saturday set; the first is the sales read.

Section 2 — What you'll need

Total time: 15 minutes

You'll need:

  • Last week's sales-by-store report. Ideally it's already in the Claude chat from the sales-read recipe. If not, you'll drop it in fresh.
  • 15 quiet minutes.

Tool:

  • Claude desktop app (free) or ChatGPT desktop app (free tier works for files under 10MB).

Section 3 — The recipe

Step 1. Reuse the same Claude chat from the sales analysis you just ran. The numbers are still sitting in that conversation, so Claude can write the email without re-reading anything. (Haven't run that one yet? Start there — it's the natural first move — then come back here.)

Step 2. Paste this prompt:

Write me a draft email to my district managers for Monday morning. Four to six sentences. Call out the two stores that need the most attention this week and what to look at. Mention one positive trend worth celebrating. End with a specific question I want each DM to answer by Wednesday. Use the actual store names and numbers from the report.

Step 3. Wait for the text, then read it. Don't like the tone? Just tell the agent. Say "make it friendlier," or "sound like General Patton," or "scare the living hell out of them." It'll rewrite on the spot, as many times as you want, until it sounds like you.

Step 4. Cut and paste it into Gmail, Outlook, or whatever you use, and send it. (If you want to get fancier, you can hook Gmail and other email tools directly into Claude so it sends for you — we'll get into that on a later recipe.)

Section 4 — What to expect

A good draft names two stores, ties each to a specific number, celebrates one real win, and ends with a question that can't be answered "looks good." "Westgate dinner was down 12% — what changed on the line? Riverside lunch was up 8% on flat labor; let's study it. By Wednesday, tell me one thing each store is doing to fix or repeat this." That's the shape.

A bad draft is vague and congratulatory — "Great work this week, team, let's keep the momentum going." If you get that, your prompt was too soft or the report didn't have store-level detail. Re-prompt with be specific, name stores and numbers, no pep talk.

Section 5 — FAQ

How do I get it to sound like me, not a robot?

Beyond the quick tone commands in Step 3, paste an old email you actually sent and tell Claude match this tone. It'll learn your cadence — short sentences, the way you open and sign off — and write the next one in your voice.

Should I just send what Claude writes?

No. The draft gets you off the blank page; it doesn't get you out of reading it. Claude can't see what happened in your stores this week beyond the numbers — the water-main break, the GM who's out. Add that one piece of context before you hit send. That's where your judgment goes in.

What if I don't have last week's report in the chat yet?

Start with the sales-read recipe first — it's the natural step before this one. Drag the report in, have Claude read it, then come back to this prompt in the same window. The email is sharper when Claude has already done the read.

Section 6 — Where this goes if you want to keep going

This is one move from the Expo recipe library — short, specific, do-this-on-Saturday guides for multi-unit operators learning to use AI without anyone selling them something. It pairs with How to Have Claude Read Last Week's Sales Report, and the longer story behind both lives in Start Using AI in Your Restaurant This Weekend. If you want every Saturday recipe as it ships, the Learn page is the spine.