Restaurant booking system: how to choose and cut no-shows

Every restaurant needs the same thing from a booking system: on a Friday at six, one screen that tells you who is coming, when, how many, to which table, and anything special about them. Behind that screen, the system has to understand how your dining room actually works.

• Tables and covers: every table with its size, which ones can be pushed together, which are outside and only work in summer.
• Sittings and turn times: a two-top on a Tuesday might take 75 minutes, a six-top on Saturday two and a half hours.
• Online booking from your website, Google and social media, with the times you choose to release.
• Guest notes: allergies, high chairs, wheelchair access, anniversaries, regulars.
• A waiting list for when you’re full.
• Reminders and confirmations, with an easy way to cancel.

This is where small restaurants get caught out. There are three common models in the UK:

1. A flat monthly fee, typically somewhere between £50 and £200 for a single site, sometimes with a setup fee.
2. A fee per cover, usually charged on bookings made through the provider’s own app or marketplace, sometimes on every online booking.
3. A free tier paid for by marketplace commission or card fees on deposits.

Do the maths with your own numbers. A bistro doing 1,500 online covers a month at £1 a cover pays £1,500 a month, far more than most flat subscriptions. A café with ten bookings a week might be perfectly served by a free tier. Ask every vendor for a written quote based on your real covers, including card-processing fees on deposits.

No-shows are one of the most painful costs in UK hospitality. Industry surveys suggest something like one booking in twenty doesn’t turn up, and on a busy night a no-show for eight is the profit gone. The measures that work, roughly in order of how much friction they add:

1. Confirm immediately with the date, time, party size and how to cancel.
2. Remind the day before, or the morning of the booking.
3. Make cancelling easy: a link that frees the table, not a phone line nobody answers.
4. Keep a waiting list and offer freed tables quickly.
5. Take card details with a clear no-show charge for larger groups.
6. Take a deposit for big groups, set menus and peak dates like Mother’s Day and the weeks before Christmas.

During service, nobody has time to scroll. The best booking screens show the evening as a timeline or floor plan: tables down the side, time across the top, each booking a block you can move. Seated, starters, mains, paid: some systems track the table status so the host knows which tables will turn soon.

Test this on the device you’ll actually use, usually a tablet on the host stand. Big tap targets, readable from a step away, quick to add a walk-in.

UK food businesses must be able to tell customers which of the 14 major allergens are in their dishes, and staff should ask about allergies when an order is taken. A booking system helps by capturing the information early, so the kitchen isn’t surprised at 8.15 on a Saturday.

• add a clear allergies and dietary requirements field to the online booking form;
• show it prominently on the booking during service, not hidden in a notes tab;
• print or display it on the kitchen’s list for the night;
• still ask at the table: what was typed three weeks ago may be incomplete.

The same applies to high chairs, wheelchair access, prams, dogs and celebrations. A short list of tick boxes on the booking form gets more useful answers than a free-text “anything else?” box that most guests leave empty.

Marketplaces bring new diners, and that has value, especially for a new opening. But regulars who book through a marketplace become, in a sense, the marketplace’s customers: they see your competitors next to you, and you may pay a fee every time they come back.

The usual compromise is to be on one or two marketplaces for discovery, while making it easy to book directly: a clear “Book a table” button on your website and your Google Business Profile, a booking page with your own branding, and a confirmation email that comes from you.

If you want something simpler or more personal than the big platforms, you can build it with Plannify. Describe it (“tables and covers, two sittings on Friday and Saturday, allergies on the booking, a waiting list”) and a team of AI agents builds the back-office diary in front of you. If you also want guests to book from their phones, you can build a website or an app for your restaurant, with your menu, photos and table bookings.

There are no per-cover fees: building is free with the AI you choose. Confirmation and reminder emails can be set up as automations, and you change everything by writing in the chat.

Read more in build an app and build business software.