Honestly, that "basic business" line misses the point... The customer already lost their time and gas driving back. A gift card just locks them into spending more money at the place that messed up. It's not being generous, it's a calculated move to recover future sales after their own mistake.

My forge used to burn money just as fast as coal. Glad you found a way to make it less of a hungry monster.

Leaving a quarter inch of fat" is smart, I definitely learned that the hard way too. I used to trim everything super lean thinking I was doing people a favor. Turns out I was just making dry pork and wasting my own time.

Yeah, that shorter time makes a huge difference. I do something like @hollym82 but at 390 for 16 minutes, always comes out perfect.

That's a classic board game group trap. We had the same issue with our group getting stuck on Wingspan for way too long. What finally worked was making a rule where the person who wins the old favorite has to pick and teach the next new game from the shelf. It spreads the learning work around and makes people actually open the boxes they bought.