Restaurant Reservations, Deposits and No-Show Protection

Reservations is the one Mosey product with a monthly plan, and it is free up to 75 bookings a month. There is no per-cover charge at any tier, and deposits carry 0% commission — every cent a diner puts down reaches you.

Take bookings from wherever a diner finds you

Most bookings do not start on a booking page. They start on Instagram, on a Google listing, or on your own website, and every extra tap between there and a confirmed table costs you covers.

• In the Mosey app, where diners are already searching for somewhere to eat tonight
• A booking link for your Instagram bio or your Google listing
• An embeddable widget for your own website, on your own domain's page
• By phone or at the door, entered by staff as a manual booking

A diner booking through the widget does not need a Mosey account. They pick a time, leave a name and a number, pay a deposit if you ask for one, and they are booked. Asking a first-time customer to install an app before they can hold a table is how a booking becomes a phone call to somebody else.

Deposits, and why they cost you nothing

Set a deposit per cover or per booking, and choose when it applies — every booking, large parties only, peak nights only, or specific slots. Mosey takes 0% on deposits. They are passed to you in full through your own Stripe account, because a deposit is not revenue we helped you earn; it is your money being held.

On Host, you can take a card hold instead of a charge. The diner authorises a card and is only charged if they do not turn up. Most people prefer that to paying up front, and it converts better than a charge on the same booking.

Three layers against no-shows

No-shows are not one problem, so there is not one answer.

1. Reminders and confirmation. A 24-hour reminder on every tier; two-hour and two-week reminders plus attendance confirmation from Starter. Most no-shows are forgetting, not deciding.
2. A deposit or a card hold. The strongest signal available, and the one to reach for on the covers you cannot afford to lose.
3. A trust score. On Host, a diner with a repeated no-show pattern across the network is flagged and can be required to leave a deposit. The diner is never shown a count and never told a number, and a cancellation — however late — never counts against them. Cancelling is the behaviour you want to encourage.

Turn a cancellation into revenue

A cancelled table two hours before service is usually a loss. Post it to the cancellations page instead and it becomes a last-minute booking for somebody who wanted you and could not get in. If a new diner claims the slot, the original deposit goes back in full and the new one is taken. If nobody claims it, your normal cancellation policy applies as it always would.

A diner can also transfer a booking to a friend, which turns "we can't make it" into a table that still gets sat.

The waitlist

Take names for a date that is already full. Starter gives you the waitlist; Host adds cross-date matching, so a party that wanted Friday can be offered Saturday when a table opens. The guest gets a 24-hour window to claim it before it moves on.

Walk-ins and the queue, free on every tier

The walk-in queue is not tier-gated and does not require you to run reservations at all. A guest scans a code at the door and joins from their phone — no app, no account — and gets a message when the table is ready. You set the typical wait per party, cap the queue, or pause it when the kitchen is under. It works on its own for a place that does not take bookings, and beside reservations for a place that does.

The floor, on Host

Draw your room once — areas, table shapes, capacities — and the system can assign tables itself, combine them for a large party, and hold your walk-in reserve back. The Floor Manager Dashboard is a live wall-mount view of the room: which tables are seated, which are running late, which are paying. Turn-time overrides are per table, because a two-top by the window is not a six-top in the back.

What it costs

• Free — up to 75 bookings a month. Bookings, walk-ins and the queue, manual entry, 24-hour reminders, QR check-in and source tracking.
• Starter, €79.99 a month or €879.99 a year — up to 200 bookings. Adds deposits, the waitlist, guest notes and allergens, party rules, buffer times, closures, the cancellations page, extra reminders, attendance confirmation and calendar sync.
• Host, €169.99 a month or €1869.99 a year — unlimited bookings. Adds the floor plan and auto-assign, the Floor Manager Dashboard, card-hold deposits, the trust score, CRM and VIP tags, multi-staff with PIN protection, peak rules, dynamic overbooking and forecasting.

Every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial, annual plans are one month free, and a downgrade never deletes what you configured — your floor plan and peak rules wait for you if you come back up.

0% on deposits at every tier.

Against per-cover charging

Reservation systems usually charge per cover, and the bill grows exactly as you get busier. At a rate of €1.50 a cover, 200 bookings of four is €1200 a month.

Starter is €79.99. Host is €169.99 with no booking limit at all. A full Saturday costs you nothing extra, which is the point: you should not be charged more for the service going well.

Setting up

1. Account → Features → Reservations. A Reservations section appears in your sidebar.
2. Set your booking hours, which are often not your opening hours — last seating is rarely last orders.
3. Set party sizes and turn times, plus a buffer between bookings if you need one.
4. Connect Stripe from Business Info → Account Setup. Required only if you want deposits.
5. Decide your deposit policy — flat or per cover, and which bookings it applies to. Start with large parties and peak nights rather than everything.
6. Add your tables (Host) or set a covers-per-slot cap (Free and Starter).
7. Put the link where diners already are — Instagram bio, Google listing, and the widget on your own site.
8. Make a test booking and walk it through to seated before a diner does.

What it connects to

• The walk-in queue — free on every tier, and it runs with or without reservations.
• Mosey Pay — a diner paying at the table at 1.5% shows as paying on the floor view, so staff can see which tables are about to turn.
• Loyalty — a booking that ends in a payment through Mosey earns automatically.
• Early Bird offers — a perk attached to a quiet slot and badged on it, honoured at the table with no deposit and no ticket. The label is frozen onto the booking, so staff and analytics stay right after you edit the offer.
• Gatherings — a large private booking with a quote, a deposit split across the group, and dietary requirements collected by shareable link.
• Events — turn a booking into a ticketed sitting, at 4%.
• Food Trails — Host venues can lead a multi-venue trail; any paid venue can join one.