How to Set Up Online Reservations for Your Restaurant

Most of setting up online reservations is not software. It is a handful of decisions about how your room actually works, made once and written down. Get those right and any decent booking system will do its job. Get them wrong and none will.

Step 1: Set your booking hours

Booking hours are the times you will seat a table, which is rarely the same as your opening hours.

If the kitchen closes at 9.30, your last booking is probably 8.45 or 9.00. If lunch service really ends at 2.30, a 2.15 booking is a table that will still be there at 3.30. Write down the last time you would genuinely want to seat a party, for each service.

Step 2: Set turn times by party size

A turn time is how long a table is held for one booking. One number for every table is the most common mistake in a new booking system.

• A two-top at lunch might need 60 minutes
• A four-top at dinner might need 90
• A party of eight might need two hours or more

Set them from what actually happens, not what you would like to happen. Add a buffer between bookings if your tables need resetting.

Step 3: Decide how many covers you can take per slot

The limit is usually the kitchen rather than the tables. Ten tables all seated at 7.30 is ten tables of starters landing at once.

Set a covers-per-slot cap — how many people you can seat in any fifteen or thirty minutes — and the system will spread bookings across the evening.

Step 4: Decide your deposit policy

Deposits are the strongest protection against no-shows, and also a reason some diners book elsewhere. So be selective.

A good starting policy:

• No deposit for small tables on quiet nights
• A deposit per cover for large parties
• A deposit on peak nights — Friday, Saturday, bank holidays, December

On Mosey you can set exactly this: a deposit per cover or per booking, applied to every booking, large parties only, peak nights only, or specific slots. Mosey takes 0% on deposits; every cent reaches you.

On the Host plan you can take a card hold instead of a charge — the card is only charged if the diner does not turn up, which most diners prefer.

Step 5: Turn on reminders

Most no-shows are people who forgot, not people who decided not to come. A reminder the day before recovers a surprising share of them.

On Mosey a 24-hour reminder is included on every tier, including free. Starter adds a two-hour reminder and attendance confirmation.

Step 6: Put the link where diners already are

Almost no bookings start on a booking page. They start on:

• Instagram — put the link in your bio
• Google — add it to your business listing
• Your website — embed the booking widget on your own page

A diner booking through the link or the widget does not need an account or an app. Every extra step between seeing you and booking a table costs covers.

Step 7: Keep phone bookings in the same place

Some diners will always ring. Enter those bookings in the same system, so the tables are in one place rather than split between a paper diary and a screen. Two sources of truth for one room is how a table gets double-booked.

Step 8: Make a test booking

Before a real diner does, book a table yourself. Walk it all the way through: confirmation, reminder, arrival, seated. Then cancel it and check the cancellation behaves as you expect.

What it costs on Mosey

• Free — up to 75 bookings a month, with manual bookings, 24-hour reminders and the walk-in queue
• Starter, €79.99 a month — up to 200 bookings, adding deposits, the waitlist and extra reminders
• Host, €169.99 a month — unlimited bookings, the floor plan, card holds and the trust score

There is no per-cover charge at any tier, and 0% commission on deposits. Paid plans start with a 14-day free trial.

Against per-cover charging

Many booking systems charge per cover — a fee for every person who books. It sounds small and grows exactly as you get busier. At €1.50 a cover, 200 bookings of four is €1,200 a month.

A flat plan with no per-cover charge costs the same on a full Saturday as a quiet one, which is the right way round: you should not be charged more because service went well. When you compare systems, work out the monthly cost on your busiest month, not your average one.

After the first month

Look at where your bookings came from. Most systems, Mosey included, record the source — Instagram, Google, your website, the app. If one channel brings most of your covers, put the link there more prominently. If one brings none, the link is probably not where you think it is.

Mistakes to avoid

• Booking hours copied from opening hours
• One turn time for every table
• A deposit on every booking, which quietly sends diners elsewhere
• A link nobody can find, buried on a page three clicks deep

What it connects to

• Restaurant reservations, deposits and no-show protection
• Take bookings on your own site and Instagram
• Floor plan and no-show protection
• How to set up a walk-in queue
• What Mosey costs — every rate on one page