An Alternative to OpenTable for Irish Restaurants

Most restaurants do not choose a booking system so much as inherit one. It was there when they opened, or everybody else seemed to use it, and the monthly bill became one of those lines nobody reads.

It is worth reading. Booking systems differ a great deal in how they charge, and the difference is largest in exactly the months you are busiest.

How booking systems usually charge

International booking platforms commonly combine two things:

• A monthly plan, often tiered by features
• A fee per cover or per booking, sometimes only for bookings that arrive through their own marketplace, sometimes for more

Plans vary by market and change over time, so check the current pricing of any provider you are comparing. The principle, though, is what matters: a per-cover fee grows as you get busier. A full December costs you more than a quiet January, for serving the same tables with the same staff.

At €1.50 a cover, 200 bookings of four people is €1,200 in a month. That is the number worth putting beside a flat plan.

What a booking system actually needs to do

Strip away the feature lists and a restaurant needs a booking system to:

1. Take bookings from where diners already are — Instagram, Google, your website
2. Respect how your room works — turn times by party size, covers per slot, booking hours that are not the same as opening hours
3. Protect you from no-shows — reminders first, deposits where they matter
4. Keep phone and walk-in bookings in the same place, so a table is never promised twice
5. Cost the same on a full night as a quiet one

Most systems do the first four reasonably well. The fifth is where they differ.

Mosey Reservations, and what it costs

Mosey is an Irish-built alternative, and its reservations run on flat plans with no per-cover charge at any tier.

• Free — up to 75 bookings a month, with manual bookings, 24-hour reminders, QR check-in and the walk-in queue
• Starter, €79.99 a month (€879.99 a year) — up to 200 bookings, adding deposits, the waitlist, guest notes and allergens, party rules and extra reminders
• Host, €169.99 a month (€1,869.99 a year) — unlimited bookings, the floor plan and auto-assign, the Floor Manager Dashboard, card-hold deposits and the trust score

Deposits carry 0% commission at every tier, and every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial.

Deposits and no-shows

A good booking system treats no-shows as three problems, because they are:

• People who forgot — solved by reminders, which on Mosey start on the free tier
• People whose plans changed — solved by making cancellation easy, and by a waitlist and a cancellations page that turn a freed table into somebody else's booking
• The occasional repeat no-show — on Host, a trust score flags a pattern so that diner can be asked for a deposit, without anybody else being asked

Deposits can be per cover or per booking, applied to every booking, large parties only, peak nights only or specific slots. On Host, a card hold can replace a charge: the diner is only charged if they do not turn up.

A booking system that also brings diners

This is the biggest difference between Mosey and a pure booking tool.

A booking widget waits for diners to find you somewhere else. Mosey is also where diners in Ireland search for somewhere to eat, with ratings from people who actually ate there and photographs taken at the table. Your bookable tables sit on the same profile as your menu, your ratings and your offers, so the diner deciding where to go tonight can book in the same place they decided.

Your guest list is the asset

The most valuable thing a booking system holds is not the diary. It is the list of people who have eaten with you: who comes back, how often, what they are celebrating, what they cannot eat.

On some platforms that relationship belongs, in practice, to the platform, which then sells access to those same diners back to you. On Mosey the guest notes, allergens and history sit with your venue. On Host, CRM and VIP tags let you recognise a regular before they reach the door, and a loyalty programme can turn a booking that ends in a payment into a visit that counts.

When you compare systems, ask plainly: if I leave, what comes with me?

Switching without disruption

Switching booking systems sounds risky and rarely is, if you do it in order:

1. Set up Mosey first — booking hours, turn times, party sizes, deposit rules
2. Enter your future bookings as manual bookings, so the diary is complete
3. Change the link in your Instagram bio, Google listing and website
4. Run both for a week or two, until the old one stops receiving new bookings
5. Make a test booking and walk it through to seated

Questions to ask any provider

• What will I pay in my busiest month, not my average one?
• Is there a fee per cover, and on which bookings?
• Do you take a percentage of deposits?
• Does a diner need an account or an app to book?
• Can I export my bookings and guest list if I leave?

What it connects to

• How to set up online reservations
• Restaurant reservations, deposits and no-show protection
• How to reduce no-shows
• Take bookings on your own site and Instagram
• What Mosey costs — every rate on one page