Let them book a table at half past eleven at night.

The phone does not ring when dinner gets decided

Tables are not decided at noon, which is when somebody can pick up your phone: they are decided mid-afternoon at work, in the group chat, and on the sofa the night before. At those three moments your venue is full, closed, or the person nearest the phone is carrying plates.

A booking from the website does not take that work away: it moves it to a better hour. The request comes in on its own, you see it when you can and you confirm it in twenty seconds, instead of losing a whole service answering calls.

Commission per cover, in a business of thin margins

Booking platforms work and they bring people who did not know you, which is why they make sense. What makes no sense is paying commission on the customer who searched for your name, came to your website and booked: that customer was already yours. In hospitality, where the margin is counted in points rather than tens, that difference shows at the end of the month.

With bookings on your own site the request comes straight to you, and the customer stays yours, with their phone number, their history and their loyalty. The sensible thing is to have both and not pay twice for the same table.

Closing Saturday night in ten seconds

A booking system is only useful if you are in charge of it. Sittings open and close by writing a sentence — «close bookings for Saturday night», «open the terrace from the 15th», «on the 12th, lunch only» — and whatever closes stops being offered right away. Nobody books where there is no longer a table, which is the fastest way to start a night badly.

What to ask for, and what there is no need to ask

A booking needs a name, a time, a number of covers and a phone number in case something happens. It does not need an ID number or a date of birth, and asking for more is not prudence: the GDPR requires keeping only what is adequate and limited to what is necessary.

There is a detail almost nobody takes into account: if the form asks about allergies or intolerances, that is information about a person’s health, which the same regulation treats as a special category. It does not mean you cannot ask — of course you can, and you should — it means you ask with an explanation, use it for what it was asked for, and do not keep it forever in a shared spreadsheet.

The same thing, explained in general: Bookings and appointments