Online table booking for restaurants: an app, or just a link?

What a restaurant is actually booking

A restaurant does not book a fixed service the way a barber does. It books space for a stretch of time: a table for four from eight to half past nine. It sounds like a small difference, and it changes everything about how the night is arranged.

Three things decide whether a reservation works: the table size against the party, when they sit and how long they stay, and the night that runs past midnight. If you treat Friday with a schedule that ends at twelve, you lose the hours after it, and those are some of your busiest.

That late night is where many systems break. In WGTK a booking after midnight counts on its proper night, so a table at one in the morning on a Thursday night shows on Thursday, not on Friday morning.

• Table size against the party size
• The sitting time and how long the table stays busy
• The night that runs past midnight
• The hours the kitchen is closed between lunch and dinner

An app or a link: the difference the guest pays

An app means the guest installs something on their phone before they can book with you. Someone looking for dinner tonight will not install an app for one table, especially two hours before the meal while comparing three places.

A link works the other way round. It opens from wherever the guest already is, an Instagram bio, a WhatsApp message or a Google result, and it shows the times that are genuinely free. No download and no account, just a name and a mobile number, and a confirmation straight away.

The cost is different too. An app in your restaurant’s name needs development, two app stores and constant updates. A page that opens from a link costs you a subscription and a setup once. An app pays off for a place with points, loyalty and repeat orders, not for a place that wants its weekend nights arranged.

There is a third option: the booking marketplaces that list your restaurant next to others. They bring guests who do not know you, and in return they take a commission or a fee, and the guest’s relationship is with them, not with you. That call is between you and your margin, and either way your own link should exist.

Reservations and the guest who walks in

Most restaurants run two streams: booked tables and people who come through the door. The common mistake is opening every table to online booking, so a guest arrives at nine, sees half the room empty, and hears that everything is reserved.

The answer is to book some and hold some. Open half your tables online on the busy nights and keep the rest for walk-ins. After a month you will know the split that suits your room, and it will not be the same on a Tuesday as on a Friday night.

And when someone walks in, record them with quick record from the dashboard, so a table that is busy in the room is not free on your screen. A screen that does not match the room makes you trust the wrong number, and accept a booking you cannot serve.

A table held for someone who never came

This is the oldest problem in restaurants, and it has no complete fix. What you can do is make it happen less often, and make it cost less when it happens.

Cut the number with a reminder. A message two or three hours before gives the guest a chance to cancel instead of disappearing, and gives you the table back in time to use it. In WGTK reminders go out automatically from your restaurant’s own WhatsApp number once you connect it in settings, and if you have not connected it, you send them in one tap from the dashboard.

Cut the cost with a written rule: we hold the table for fifteen minutes. Put it on the booking page and in the reminder, and after that the table goes back to the room. A rule the guest knew from the start does not turn into an argument at the door.

Some restaurants ask for a deposit on large parties. That is a restaurant’s own decision and it needs a way to take money. The link-based booking page we are talking about here does not take card payments, so any deposit stays between you and the guest.

• Remind the guest two or three hours before
• Write the holding time on the booking page
• Mark who showed up and who did not, so you learn the repeat names
• Keep tables for walk-ins on the busy nights

When your restaurant needs no system at all

For some places reservations do harm. If your service is quick and guests sit for twenty minutes, booking ties up the room for nothing, and a line at the door moves faster for everybody. And if you are not turning people away for lack of tables, a small book at the host stand does the job.

If you take five reservations a day and WhatsApp keeps up, stay on WhatsApp. A system starts to earn its place when you start forgetting, when you answer the same question ten times a day, or when more than one person takes bookings and they write them in different places.

There is one clear sign that you need it: guests telling you they called and nobody answered. A call nobody answered is a reservation that went to another restaurant on the same street.