Restaurant reservation deposit: when to ask, how much, and how to word it

A deposit is the bluntest tool in the book. It works, and it costs you bookings from people who would have turned up anyway. The skill is not in deciding whether to take deposits. It is in deciding which bookings are asked for one, so the exposure is covered and the Tuesday two-top is left alone.

The four situations where a deposit earns its friction

• Large parties. A party of eight that does not arrive takes out a whole section, and large bookings are the ones most likely to shrink or vanish, because no single person feels responsible for them.
• Peak windows. Saturday at 20:00 is the inventory you could have sold three times. A midweek lunch is not.
• Prepaid experiences. A tasting menu, a chef's table or an event night has food bought against it. That is a cost you carry whether the guest arrives or not.
• Guests with history. Somebody who has not shown up twice is a different risk from somebody who has been in every month for a year, and the rule can say so.

When not to ask

Small parties in quiet windows, regulars you recognise, and anyone booking within a few hours of the meal. Late bookings are already committed, and asking for a card at that point mostly buys you an abandoned booking.

Enough to make the guest remember, not enough to feel like a ticket

Common shapes in the market are a flat amount per guest for large parties, a flat amount for a peak booking, and full prepayment for a tasting menu. The amount should be small next to the bill and large enough to be worth remembering. On a party of eight, an amount per guest that is a fraction of one main course does that, without pricing you next to the restaurant down the road that asks for nothing.

Decide too what the deposit does. Held against the card and released after service is the friendliest version. Taken and put against the bill is the clearest. Taken and kept only on a late cancellation is the version most guests consider fair.

• Held, then released after the party arrives
• Taken, then deducted from the final bill
• Taken, then returned unless the booking is cancelled inside the window

The sentence that keeps the booking

Guests do not object to a deposit. They object to a surprise. Say it where the guest is choosing the time, not on the last screen after they have typed everything in.

Taking the deposit without a card reader

The card is taken on the booking page at the moment the guest books, not at the venue and not over the phone. A phone booking gets a link to the same page, so the host never handles a card number and nobody writes one on the back of a docket.

For a phone booking, the sentence is short: I will text you a link to hold the card, and the table is yours as soon as it goes through. Read back the time while they do it.

How to know whether it worked

Watch three numbers before and after you turn a rule on: the no-show rate on the bookings the rule covers, the number of bookings that were started and abandoned at the deposit step, and the total covers in that window. A rule that cuts no-shows by a third and covers by half is a rule that lost you money.

• No-show rate on the covered bookings
• Bookings abandoned at the deposit step
• Total covers in the affected window
• Deposit recovery: what was held, what was charged, what was released

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