TutorialsSet it up,
step by step.
Twenty-three guides written from the product itself, with every click shown: first the website, the domain and the email, then the whole operation, from bookings and live service to the kitchen, the till and the numbers.
Chapter I · Get set up
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 websiteFrom 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.
How to set up your domainBuy 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.
How to set up your email addressinfo@your-domain for £2 a month — webmail, 15 GB, and your phone signed in with the IMAP settings spelled out on the card.Chapter II · Run the day
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 dashboardWhat 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.
How to put your menu onlinePhotograph 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.
How to set your hours and booking rulesWeekly 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.
How to run your bookingsEnquiries 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.
Take group pre-ordersEvery guest at a large booking gets a private link, lists their allergies and picks a dish per course; you set the cut-off and print the kitchen sheet.
How to run service at the tableThe 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.
How to take orders onlineYour 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.
How to set up printers and receiptsConnect 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.Chapter III · Grow the room
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 guestsEvery 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.
How to send emails, campaigns and journeysFourteen automatic guest emails you can rewrite in your own voice, one-off campaigns with live audience counts, and journeys that send themselves.
How to sell gift cardsSell 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.
How to run your team and rotaFour 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.
How to see what’s workingThree reports on one page — your site, your settled sales, your bookings funnel — first-party and cookieless, readable in five minutes a week.Chapter IV · Go further
Close the circle.
The money, through your own Stripe and your own bank at 0% TableSpark commission; a walk through your restaurant exactly as a guest sees it; and the app that walk leads to.
How to get paidConnect Stripe once and card payments flow straight to your own bank — online orders, deposits and gift cards alike, with 0% TableSpark commission.
What your guests seeWalk 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.
Your guests’ appThe 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.Chapter V · Run the operation
Back of house, end of night.
Close the day with every tender and the cash drawer accounted for, run the kitchen display with courses held and fired, cost every plate from its recipe, and settle any table the way it asks.
Close the dayRead the day’s takings by tender and VAT, count the cash drawer, share tips by the rota and close the day as a saved Z report. One page, real clicks.
Run the kitchen displaySet up kitchen stations, hold and fire courses, bump and recall tickets, read Expo and all-day counts, and sell out dishes by portion count. Real clicks.
Stock and recipe costsAdd suppliers and ingredients, build recipes so every dish shows its cost and margin, log deliveries and waste, run a stocktake and read the variance.
Split bills and pay in partsSettle a bill by tender, split it evenly between guests, undo a mis-tap, split by dish, combine bills and move a table in Service. Every click shown.Questions people ask before they start.
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.
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.