Set it up, step by step
A guest hears your name, types it into a phone, and finds a commission marketplace or the restaurant two streets away instead of you. These guides fix that for good — first the website, the domain and the email, then the whole operation — dashboard, menu, hours, bookings, live service, online orders, printers, guests, email, gift cards, your team and the numbers — with every click shown and nothing assumed.
Last updated 2 Sep 2026— the TableSpark team, London
The founding afternoon: publish the website, put your own name on it, and answer from an address that matches. Do these three once and everything after runs on top of them.
How to build your website
From nothing to a published, search-ready site in an afternoon — choose a design, photograph the menu instead of typing it, review what a search engine reads, edit in your own words, publish.
- 1Choose a design that matches how you serve
- 2Turn your menu into a page instead of typing it
- 3Check what a search engine actually reads
- 4Edit in the words you use with guests
- 5Publish, and know what goes out with it
How to set up your domain
Buy it in Settings from £6.33 a year and watch it connect itself — or bring one you already own with a single record. DNS, Search Console and transfers from one dashboard.
- 1Search for your restaurant’s name
- 2Register it in your name
- 3Watch it go live
- 4Run it from the Domain dashboard
- 5Prove ownership to Google
- 6Or connect a domain you already own
How to set up your email address
info@your-domain for £2 a month — webmail, 15 GB, and your phone signed in with the IMAP settings spelled out on the card.
- 1Create your mailbox
- 2Set your password
- 3Sign in on your phone
- 4Point guest emails at your address
The daily machine: the dashboard you glance at, the menu guests read, the hours and rules that guard your book, and the floor where bookings, orders and receipts actually happen.
Around your dashboard
What every card on the home screen means, where the alerts live, and where your account and plan are managed — the five-minute orientation that makes the rest obvious.
- 1Read the greeting and the week’s numbers
- 2Switch sites, view live, open the builder
- 3Check alerts when something needs you
- 4Keep your account and plan in Settings
How to put your menu online
Photograph the paper menu and let the scan draft it, then tidy sections, prices, photos and allergens in the editor — changes reach your live site the moment you make them.
- 1Scan the menu from photos
- 2Review names and prices before anything saves
- 3Edit dishes, photos and allergens
- 4Print QR codes that open it at the table
How to set your hours and booking rules
Weekly hours and bank-holiday overrides in Settings; sittings, party sizes, lead times, deposits and one-off closures on the Bookings page. Set once, enforced every night.
- 1Set the weekly opening hours
- 2Override the dates that differ
- 3Define your services and their rules
- 4Turn on deposits where you need them
How to run your bookings
Enquiries land in the Inbox, bookings live in the diary, and every party gets the right table — the picker, the waitlist and the floor-plan editor included.
- 1Answer enquiries from the Inbox
- 2Read the day’s book at a glance
- 3Take a booking and pick its table
- 4Draw the floor plan your service runs on
How to run service at the table
The live floor shows every table’s state; the booking sheet is the till. Seat guests, take the order, settle one bill — without leaving the room.
- 1Read the floor and its colours
- 2Seat a booking or a walk-in
- 3Take and adjust orders at the table
- 4Bring it to one bill and take payment
How to take orders online
Your own Order page takes dine-in, collection and delivery orders with 0% TableSpark commission — and every order lands on one screen that runs the kitchen.
- 1Put the Order page on your site
- 2See what guests see, sheet by sheet
- 3Work the Orders screen in service
- 4Settle payment and handle refunds
How to set up printers and receipts
Connect a CloudPRNT printer, give it a role — kitchen tickets or guest receipts — shape the ticket in the editor, and print a test page before service.
- 1Connect the printer with one URL
- 2Choose kitchen or front of house
- 3Shape the ticket in the editor
- 4Print a test page and go
The compounding part: know your regulars, write to them well, sell dinners before they happen, run the team without spreadsheets — and read the numbers that say it’s working.
How to know your guests
Every booking and sign-up builds a profile on its own — star your VIPs, keep a note, collect verified reviews and run a points-based loyalty programme.
- 1Read the guest list and its tags
- 2Open a profile and its history
- 3Moderate and reply to reviews
- 4Reward regulars with points
How to send emails, campaigns and journeys
Fourteen automatic guest emails you can rewrite in your own voice, one-off campaigns with live audience counts, and journeys that send themselves.
- 1Read what guests already get
- 2Put it in your own words and brand
- 3Send a campaign to a real audience
- 4Let journeys handle the follow-ups
How to sell gift cards
Sell from your own site or straight from the desk, watch every balance on one audited ledger, and let guests spend them online or in the room.
- 1Put the gift-card form on your site
- 2Issue a card at the desk in seconds
- 3Read the liability ledger
- 4Refund, adjust or void with a reason
How to run your team and rota
Four clear roles with no per-seat charges, a rota you drag together and publish, honest hours totals, payroll exports — and every person’s own rota in their pocket.
- 1Invite people with the right role
- 2Drag the week’s rota together
- 3Publish it and collect the ticks
- 4Export the hours for payroll
How to see what’s working
Three reports on one page — your site, your settled sales, your bookings funnel — first-party and cookieless, readable in five minutes a week.
- 1Read visits and the four trend cards
- 2See where visitors come from
- 3Check settled sales and refunds
- 4Watch the no-show rate weekly
Three guides that close the circle: the money — your own Stripe, your own bank, 0% commission — a walk through your restaurant exactly as a guest experiences it, and the app that walk leads to, from your own side.
How to get paid
Connect Stripe once and card payments flow straight to your own bank — online orders, deposits and gift cards alike, with 0% TableSpark commission.
- 1Connect Stripe from Settings
- 2Know why the money is safe
- 3Pair a card reader if you want one
- 4Follow the money end to end
What your guests see
Walk your own restaurant the way a guest does — the booking form, the account page where their history lives, the emails that arrive on time, the review invitation after the meal.
- 1Book a table as a guest would
- 2See the account page they get
- 3Read the emails they receive
- 4Watch the review invitation land
Your guests’ app
The merchant’s side of the same app: click a section in the phone to edit it, choose layouts and photos, add your own announcements and events from a section library, pick a campaign recipe that starts off until you choose, preview it on a phone or an iPad, and scan a member card at the till.
- 1Click a section in the phone, give it your photo
- 2Choose a layout, hide, reorder, rename a tab
- 3Pick a campaign recipe, still switched off
- 4Save, Publish, scan a card at the till
Do the build first. Do the rest the same week.
The order matters less than it looks. The website works from day one on its free tablespark.uk address, so nothing blocks publishing while you think about names. The moment the domain arrives, everything upstream snaps into place on its own — the site answers at the new address, the certificate is issued, and the mailbox and sending identity can wear it too.
These guides are written from the product itself — every screenshot is the real screen, captured the day the page was last updated — and when a screen changes, the guide changes with it. If a step here ever disagrees with what you see in your own account, tell us and we fix the guide the same day.
Questions people ask before they start
Short answers. The guides carry the long ones.
How long does the first version take?
Most of an afternoon, and the slowest part is deciding on wording rather than any technical step. The menu scan removes the part that used to take an evening. You can publish a good site the same day and keep improving it afterwards — editing is not a second project.
Do I need a developer or an agency?
No. Every step is done from the same login, including the parts that normally need a specialist — structured data, sitemaps, canonicals and search verification are configured for you rather than handed to you as a task list.
What does it cost?
Building is free; you pay when you publish. Starter is £19 a month for the website, live menu, enquiries and guest records with managed search readiness. Growth is £39 for direct reservations, availability, floor plans, deposits, reminders and a custom domain with managed SSL. Full is £69 for direct online ordering, table QR ordering and up to five sites on one bill. Prices exclude VAT, and Stripe’s standard card fees apply to online payments.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes — buy one right inside Settings from £6.33 a year and it connects itself, with HTTPS handled for you, or connect a domain you already own. Every plan starts with a free subdomain so nothing blocks you from publishing on day one.
What happens to my menu when prices change?
You change the price and republish. Search engines are pinged on publish, so the corrected page is put forward immediately rather than waiting for the next crawl. This is the whole argument for running the site yourself: a menu is only accurate if changing it takes a minute.
Do I keep my guest data?
Yes. Enquiries, bookings and newsletter sign-ups are stored under your restaurant’s own account, visible in your inbox and guest list, and exportable to CSV whenever you want them.
The tutorials · start free
Start with the website
Build the whole site before you pay for anything. Choose a design, photograph your menu, and see it as a real page.
More on the detail behind these steps: building a restaurant website, restaurant SEO in the UK, what a restaurant website actually costs and cutting booking commission.