Taking a table without losing the cover, the deposit or the guest. The TableSpark restaurant booking system →
Your diary says you are full, then two no-shows and a wrong-sized table leave covers unsold, and some systems charge a fee on every cover. Here is how to choose a booking system that fits.
It is 7.30pm on a Saturday and the table for six never arrives. Ask for too much up front and you lose the booking; ask for nothing and you carry the cost.
Sunday lunch is half empty with no-shows and lost covers while walk-ins queue at the bar, and the diary is a mess of scribbles. Here is how to take bookings without booking every seat.
When the booking page, the email and the phone answer each describe the deposit differently, a late cancellation turns into an argument over wording.
When the table plan lives on a whiteboard, a party of six can arrive to the wrong tables. Draw the room once, set each table's seats and count bookings by table.
A phone-only diary costs paid time and leaves allergies on scraps of paper. Set the service rules, add the form, publish, then find the first booking in the Inbox or diary.
A booking that says only party of twelve, Saturday at eight, leaves the seating to the door. The cost is a birthday group waiting by the bar while tables are moved.
Close the diary and you lose guests a lone cook could feed; leave it open and the room books full. A covers cap for one date sits between the two.
One party limit, one notice period and one table time cannot suit both a quiet weekday lunch and a full Sunday roast. The cost lands on the busiest service of the week.
A verbal yes on the phone holds a table but protects nothing. Until money or a card hold arrives, the risk sits in the diary as a booking that can still end as an empty table.
A paper diary answers who is coming tonight. The caller on hold is asking the other question, and a slow lookup can end in a guess, a duplicate or a wrong cancellation.
The confirmation and the day-before reminder only reach guests who left an address. Phone bookings are the ones most often missing it, and the cost lands on a Saturday.
