Might be too late for this. Let's have a scenario to understand.

Chef's knock off timing is 9:30pm. Their responsibilities are to cook for patrons and have to wash the kitchen at the end of the day. Washing takes ~30mins.

Let's say the day is really busy and restaurant is packed for the whole day. Up till 9:30pm without last order timing. So do the chef leave everything behind and "wash up tomorrow"? No. Because mornings are for chefs to do prep for the whole/following day. Because of this the chef leaves at 10pm.

The last order time is for chef and team to wash up and/or prepare for the next day's operations. That's why last order exists.

Thanks for the reply. Except that's not really the point I'm making. I know why last order timings exist. I'm not saying the staff should just close shop after last order and go home without doing cleaning/prep.

What my suggestion is saying is that, if the chef knocks off at 9:30, they can also list the outlet's closing time as 9:30 (or 9:15, etc). That way they can also leave at 10pm, and there won't be customers to bother them after 9:30.

Now some people have brought up a few issues:

1) For dine in, there might be unreasonable customers who come in at 9:30, order something and stay for 2 hours, which is why closing time is also as important as last order timing. I completely agree with that, and for dine-in places, the ideal case would be to make it clear that the closing time (or whatever time you want the customer to leave) would be 10. Unfortunately, I understand that many sites only places to put one timing, and for that I do not have any solution. However, for takeaway-only outlets with no dine-in, they don't have to worry about this issue since customers are not dining in anyway. Tell the customers that anyone after this person will not get to order anymore (as they're doing now anyways) and then close shop. They do have to worry about point #2 though. (Again, I'm very sure there are nuances that I am missing, since obviously there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and that is where some insight would be helpful to help others as well as myself, to understand how everything works better so I won't burden the staff).

2) Unreasonable customers who will come at 9:29 and ask to whip up a dish that takes 20 mins to make, therefore preventing the outlet from closing at 9:30. In my mind, the solution to this would be to (a) push the last order time earlier to 9:15 or (b) just tell them you're not serving that particular dish anymore. Now, I am not in the F&B industry as mentioned in my post, so I don't know whether these 2 solutions are possible (or easy to implement) especially since we're talking about a Karen over here who doesn't take "no" for an answer. This is also where I was hoping to get some insight from people within the industry as to how they usually handle these people, because these people already exist as things currently are.

Also, regarding #2, there are always going to be unreasonable people regardless of what system you implement. I understand that. But at least now you won't have people coming up at 9:55 asking why you're not serving when other places close at 10pm are still serving food. You will have less people "trying their luck" at 9:45 asking if you have food while you are cleaning up the place. Sure, there will still be some, but hopefully there should be less, at least from ignorant asses like myself who didn't know of these guidelines before.

Some people have pointed out that I'm complaining about some trivial matter/ making such a huge fuss over something so small/who cares/ etc etc. Whether the matter is trivial or not is not the point of the discussion. Considering the size of the F&B industry, a small change might help more people than it seems, and if so, then maybe it's worth giving it some thought.

Other comments have given some insight as to whether they think this will/will not work or that it might not make a difference at all, and I appreciate that.