......What? Butling must logically be what butlers do, right?
Anyway. I've see this suggested -- just in basic principle, not in detail -- before, but I think it would be very useful to be able to see what my butler has left to hand out, or when he runs out, or when people just aren't taking the gift. It'd also be nice to be able to have him hand out items that don't stack or stack only in small numbers.
I have a few suggestions to expand on this and flesh out the butler functionality a bit.
1. Add a butler message (with an option to mute it) for "I just gave <PLAYER> a <GIFT ITEM>."
2. Add a butler message "I have run out of gifts to hand out."
3. Completely replace the current interface for giving the butler stuff to hand out. Instead of giving the butler a single item or single stack of items that is completely opaque once given, give the butler a small inventory (say, 4 spaces to start with), which you can open on demand like a cabinet, and then just drag arbitrary items between your inventory and your butler's. If you give him items of multiple different types to hand out, he will pick at random what to give each player.
But wait...! There's more!
UPGRADE CARD: Better Butling
With this upgrade, if your butler has more than one type of item in his inventory, he will offer players visiting your street a choice of the available items.
UPGRADE CARD: Butler Bootay 1/2/3
Butler Bootay 1 and 2 each add two additional spaces to your butler's inventory. Butler Bootay 3 adds a final 4 spaces.