Restaurant reservation platforms that charge for the venue, not the guest
Most restaurant reservation platforms take a monthly fee and then charge again for every guest they seat, including the regular who has been coming in for six years and would have called anyway. Reserving charges for the venue and nothing else, and the bookings arrive on your own website.
Harbour Room
Service 17:00 to 23:00
Service board
Table fitted
Deposit rule
No-show risk
Reminders
Four books and one dining room
Bookings arrive by phone during prep, by the website form nobody checks, through Instagram messages, and by somebody walking in and being promised the corner table on Saturday. Four books, one dining room, and the moment two of them disagree it happens in front of a guest.
The second loss is quieter. The four-top that never showed on a Friday is revenue that cannot be recovered on Saturday, because Saturday was already full. Both losses have the same fix: one book everything lands in, and a reason for the guest to tell you when plans change.
01
Party size, turn time and buffer, applied before anyone says yes
The engine finds the smallest table that seats the party, applies your turn time and your buffer, checks what is already on that table row and respects the service window. Six at 19:30 either fits on a six-top with the second sitting still intact, or it does not, and then the engine offers the three nearest times that genuinely work.
- Smallest suitable table first, so the big ones stay free for big parties
- Turn time per party size: 90 minutes on a two-top, 105 on a four-top, your numbers
- Buffer between two parties on the same table
- Combinable tables for a party of ten that needs two pushed together
- Lunch and dinner sittings with their own rules
- One booking per table at a time, so double booking is blocked at the source
02
The paper book, replaced by something the whole team can read
One row per table, one timeline across the service. Phone bookings, widget bookings, Google, Instagram and the walk-in queue all land on it. Moving a booking re-runs the fit, so a host tidying up the board cannot create a clash by accident.
- Walk-in queue with a quoted wait time
- Guest record on the booking: visit history, allergies, the seat they ask for
- Notes the kitchen and the host see at the same time
- Status carried by weight rather than colour: held, confirmed, at risk
03
Deposits on the bookings that need them, reminders on all of them
A blanket deposit policy costs you bookings from people who would have come. The point is to ask only where it matters, and to give everyone else an easy way to cancel in time.
- Deposit and card-hold rules by party size, day part, service and guest history
- Card taken on the booking page, with no card reader at the pass
- Confirmation immediately, reminder 24 hours before and again 3 hours before
- One tap to confirm, one tap to cancel, so a 16:00 cancellation is still a sellable table
- Waiting queue that offers the released slot to the next party automatically
- A no-show fee policy the guest agreed to when booking
04
A flat fee, so a full Saturday costs what a quiet Tuesday costs
Core is 49 USD per venue per month and Growth, which adds deposits, SMS and the risk score, is 149 USD. Nothing is charged per cover, per booking or per guest. A group of up to five restaurants runs on Multi-Venue at 499 USD. The full table is on pricing.
Put the dining room on one board this week
Create your account, enter your tables and service windows, and take your first booking from your own site.