Restaurant Table Reservation Software
A booking calendar guests can use themselves. Real-time capacity means guests book against what's actually available — not a guess a host makes over the phone.
Why it matters
A paper book has one copy and it lives at the host stand. Everybody who is not standing there is guessing — the owner at home on a Sunday, the manager building next week's rota, the server who wants to know whether the eight o'clock is still coming. So is the guest, who has to ring during service and hope somebody picks up between two orders.
Putting the book online changes what everyone knows, not just where the writing happens. A guest sees the times that are genuinely free and takes one. The host stand has it a moment later. The floor plan shows the table as spoken for. And when the night is over, what became of every booking — seated, finished, cancelled, or simply never arrived — is a record rather than an impression.
The part that decides whether any of that holds up is what availability gets counted against. A time is offered only if nothing else standing on your floor has already claimed that table: not another booking, not a private event that took the room for the evening, not a party of twenty an enquiry has been holding since March. All of it comes out of one pool. A guest offered a table you quietly promised to a wine tasting is a worse failure than a guest told you are full.
How a booking works
A date and a party size
Availability is worked out for the size of the party, because a two-top cannot take six however empty the room looks. Only tables that seat them are counted.
The times that are actually free
Half-hour slots inside your real opening hours, including a kitchen that closes after midnight. A time only appears if the whole sitting fits before you close — so nobody books 23:30 at a place that stops serving at midnight.
Confirmed on the spot
No callback and nobody checking a book. The guest gets a confirmation code, and the booking is on your floor plan before they have put their phone down.
One table, one party
Two people taking the last table in the same second is the case that quietly ruins a Saturday. The second one is told immediately instead of both being confirmed and one of them finding out at the door.
The host seats them
The booking sits on the same floor plan the host works from, with the party size, the time and whatever they asked for when they booked.
The night gets recorded
Seated, finished, cancelled, no-show. Not paperwork for its own sake — it is what everything below is built out of.
Who books, and who gets booked in
Two ways in, one calendar. Guests you have verified book themselves online — they hold an account at your venue, you approved it, and from then on they can take a table without ringing. That is deliberately not the open internet: the people booking themselves are people you have said yes to once.
Everyone else is entered by staff, in the same calendar, against the same availability. A phone call, a regular who has walked in, a party somebody stopped in to arrange on Tuesday — all of it goes in with a name and a number and behaves like any other booking from that point on. The difference is only who typed it. A guest is never told which table they have; whoever is at the pass always is.
What the book tells you afterwards
A reservation system that only takes bookings is a diary. The value of having every one of them recorded is that the pattern becomes visible, and most of what it shows is not what an owner expects.
No-shows, and what they cost
Not just how many, but the covers they took with them. Four no-shows of two is a slow night; two no-shows of eight is a different conversation entirely.
How far ahead people book
The median lead time, and the no-show rate at each distance out. Bookings made three weeks ahead and bookings made at five o'clock do not behave the same way, and knowing the gap tells you how much of next Saturday you can safely still sell.
The party sizes that actually fill
Most rooms are laid out for the party size the owner remembers rather than the one that keeps arriving. This is the number that decides whether four two-tops should be three four-tops.
Weekday and hour
Where the demand really sits, so the rota is built for the nights that need it instead of the nights that always got it.
Section by section
Which parts of the room get booked and which get filled with whoever is left. A terrace that only fills when everything else is gone is worth knowing about before you spend money on it.
How much of it walks in
The share of covers that never booked at all. It is the number that says whether holding tables back for walk-ins is prudence or lost revenue.
Common questions
Does this replace our host stand entirely?
It's built to run it. Bookings, phone calls and walk-ins all live on the same floor plan a host works from, so there is nothing to cross-check against a second book.
Can guests book directly, or does staff need to enter it?
Both. Guests you have verified book themselves online against live availability; staff enter phone and walk-in bookings into the same calendar. Neither one can take a table the other has.
Can two people end up with the same table?
No. A table is checked and taken in one motion, so two bookings arriving in the same second cannot both succeed — the second is refused at the moment it happens rather than confirmed and discovered later.
How long is a table held for?
Two hours by default, and that window is what availability is calculated from. Back-to-back sittings don't false-conflict, so a table freeing at eight can be booked for eight.
Do we have to confirm bookings by hand?
No — an online booking is confirmed as it is placed and the guest is given a code. Staff time goes into the service rather than into calling people back.
What happens to a no-show?
Mark it, and the table is released for the rest of the evening. The mark is also what makes the no-show rate in reporting mean anything — including which lead times and party sizes it concentrates in.
Does it know when we're closed?
Yes, from your opening hours, including a kitchen that closes after midnight. Slots are only offered where the whole sitting fits before service ends.
What about private events and large parties?
Both take tables out of the pool that ordinary bookings are offered from, so a room promised to a tasting or a party of twenty can't be double-sold to a couple.