My German restaurant shows as offline and the kitchen is open
Restaurant operators in Germany reach for causes when the first useful question is about ownership: whose state is this, and who is allowed to end it. Everything that follows divides on that answer. A state you set is an operational task ending in seconds. A state the platform set is a legal event, and in the European Union it carries an obligation to explain itself “prior to or at the time of the restriction or suspension taking effect”, on a durable medium. Establish which one you are in before you do anything else.
How do I tell whose state it is?
By whether a control exists and whether it responds, in that order.
A state you can see in the portal and clear with a button was yours, whoever pressed it and whenever. A state you can see and cannot clear was not. And a listing that is simply not orderable to a customer while the portal reports nothing at all is the third case, which is also not yours and is the one people spend longest arguing with.
Stop adjusting settings the moment you land in the second or third case. Every further change adds a state somebody will have to unwind later.
Why does the answer decide everything after it?
Because only one of the two answers puts you in front of an obligation.
If the state was yours, there is nothing to demand and nothing to escalate. Somebody clears it, and the useful work is finding out why it was set and never cleared.
If it was the platform’s, Regulation 2019/1150 is engaged. Article 4(1) requires the statement of reasons for a restriction or suspension. Article 4(3) gives you the right to “clarify the facts and circumstances in the framework of the internal complaint-handling process”. Article 11 requires that process to be free and accessible.
Asking for those by name is a different conversation from asking why the store is closed, and it reaches a different desk.
What if the portal shows nothing wrong?
Then the portal is answering a different question from the one you asked.
A portal reports what your account holds. Whether a customer can reach a checkout is a property of the storefront, and the two come apart during exactly the incidents worth catching. A German operator who confirms the account looks fine has confirmed nothing about whether anybody could order.
Kitchain (kitchain.co) tries to reach a checkout the way a customer would, and the answer to that is the only version of open worth arguing about afterwards.
How do I prove it was not mine, weeks later?
With two dates, and only one of them comes from the platform.
The platform supplies the date it says a measure took effect. You supply the date the listing actually stopped being orderable. Where those agree, the account is coherent and the argument moves to the merits. Where they disagree, the disagreement is worth more than the merits, because it is factual and needs nobody to concede anything.
Without your own date, a platform’s version of events is simply the version of events.