Verified guests for restaurants
Who gets to book your tables without ringing. A guest asks, you approve, and from then on they can take a table themselves — without opening your floor to the whole internet.
Why it matters
Online booking is usually sold as an all-or-nothing decision. Either your tables are open to anybody with an email address, or nobody books without speaking to somebody. The first is how a venue ends up holding a Saturday for a party that was never real; the second is how it loses the guest who rang at seven and got no answer.
Verification is the middle. A guest asks to be verified at your venue, somebody who works there approves or declines it, and from that point the guest can take a table themselves against live availability. The people booking your floor are people you have already said yes to, once.
It is a customer relationship rather than an account, and it is per venue. Being verified at one restaurant means nothing at another, which is the correct behaviour and not an oversight — a group with four sites is four separate decisions about the same person.
How it works
The guest asks
From their own account, at your venue specifically. Nothing happens to your floor until somebody there acts on it.
Somebody who works there decides
Approve or decline. It is a person's call, made with whatever a person knows — that they are a regular, that the name is familiar, that last time did not go well.
Approved guests can book themselves
Against the same live availability the host stand uses, counting the events and large parties standing on the same floor. They are never told which table they have; whoever is at the pass always is.
A decline is not permanent
Re-requesting reuses the same record rather than creating a second one, so a guest cannot flood you with requests and your list does not fill with duplicates of one person.
Approval can be withdrawn
A verified guest can have it revoked later. Regrettably necessary, and the alternative is a decision you can never take back.
Everyone else still gets a table
Verification gates self-service booking, not booking. Phone calls and walk-ins are entered by staff into the same calendar, against the same availability, and behave identically once they are in.
Why not simply open it to everyone
Plenty of venues do, and for a busy city restaurant with deposits and a waitlist it is the right answer. The case for a gate is narrower and worth stating honestly: it suits venues where the room is small enough that a no-show costs a meaningful share of the night, and where most covers come from people who have been before.
In that shape, an open booking form mostly adds risk. The upside — reaching somebody who has never heard of you — is not usually delivered by a booking widget; it is delivered by the guide, the walk-past and the recommendation. What the booking form is for is making it easy for the people who already want to come.
The gate is also a list. Knowing which guests asked to be verified at your venue is a signal you did not have before, and it is a better one than an email address collected at a till.
Common questions
Do guests have to be verified to eat here?
No. It only gates booking a table online themselves. Walk-ins and phone bookings are unaffected.
Who can approve a request?
Staff of that business. It is a decision made by somebody who works there rather than by a rule.
Is verification shared across venues?
No. It is per venue, so a guest verified at one of your sites is not automatically verified at another.
Can a guest re-apply after being declined?
Yes, and it reuses the same record rather than creating a new one.
Can we revoke it?
Yes. A previously approved guest can have verification withdrawn.
What does a verified guest actually get?
The ability to book a table themselves, against real availability, without ringing during service.