Book tables for your guests. Clients will be glad that they are guaranteed to get to their favorite establishment, and you will be able to better control and analyze the room’s occupancy.
Table reservations are available and open at:
- on devices with iOS 11 and later;
- on all tablets with Android;
- in the Poster application for Windows.
To reserve a table:
≡ and select New reservation.
In the window New booking please indicate date and time, number of guests And duration the time the table will be occupied.
Write phone number And client name.
In field Group From the drop-down list, select a group of clients of the bonus or discount system. If you do not have client groups, create them in the admin panel in the tab Marketing → Client groups.
In field A comment write the guests' wishes or everything that is important to know about the reservation. For example, “baby chair”, “flower vase”.
Click Select table and select a table on the hall map.
💡 To quickly accept a booking order, select table on the hall map and click + New reservation.
View, confirm and cancel your reservations in the reservation calendar:
In the tab List see the schedule all reserved tables, contacts and wishes of guests.
Click in the upper right corner on ≡ and select Booking.
In the tab Schedule see hourly schedule of available and reserved tables for a day:
— yellow intervals show tables that have open checks and the time the table is occupied;— blue shows the time interval during which the table is reserved. It displays the start time of the reservation, the customer's name and the number of guests.
Open your reservation review card to cancel your reservation or confirm your table reservation and open a receipt.
Monitor each room and table.
Being able to make a restaurant reservation helps relieve a lot of stress. You don't have to waste time looking for a place with free seats or wait for a table to become available. Thanks to the reservation service, you will receive only pleasant emotions from dinner at a restaurant and will be able to fully concentrate on your interlocutors.
Steps
How to plan ahead
-
Determine the number of guests. After choosing a restaurant, you need to decide how many people will come to dinner with you. Waiting times may depend on the size of the company. For example, if there are only two of you, then finding a table will probably be easier, but the task will become more complicated if you are planning a group of 10 people. Also, the number of people may affect how far in advance you need to make a reservation.
- Even if you are not sure whether a person will be able to come, still reserve a table with that person in mind. It is better to have an empty seat at the table than to look for another chair in a full establishment.
-
Select a date and time. The number of available places may depend on the day of the week. For example, it is usually easier to reserve a table for a weekday than on a weekend. It is also easier to find a free table during “quiet hours” than during the usual “peak times” for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
- Always plan a backup date and time in case the establishment does not have free tables on the originally selected day.
-
Check your phone and email for updates regularly. After booking a table online, you should receive a confirmation by email or message. In some cases, you will need to follow a link or click a button to confirm your order. You may also be sent links to cancel or change your reservation time in case of such need.
- Many table booking sites also offer discount coupons and special programs with points that can be redeemed for various services.
- If there is no link to cancel your reservation, you must call the restaurant by phone.
Select a restaurant. First of all, you need to decide which establishment you want to visit. Not all restaurants allow you to reserve a table even when the rooms are very busy. For example, small or new restaurants may not have this option due to insufficient numbers of regular customers. Before attempting to book a table, you should check the establishment's operating rules.
- Many busy restaurants do not offer reservations, so you may see queues of people waiting near popular places. Be prepared to wait if you want to get into such an establishment.
- Credit card companies often offer discounts at restaurants as part of a rewards program to attract more customers, and some luxury cards may even offer exclusive access to popular establishments.
Warnings
- Some restaurants require your credit card number when making a reservation and charge a "no show" fee if you don't show up on time or cancel in advance.
We recently launched Yell Restaurants, an application that allows you to easily book a table at your favorite establishment online. This is a great solution for guests, but how suitable is it for restaurant owners? We decided to interview HoReCa experts, and their opinions differed.
Alexander Uvarov, Managing Director "Tiki Bara »
Online booking services are a logical step in the development of e-commerce. Another question is how much this format is in demand by customers and how profitable it is for the restaurants themselves.
On the one hand, online booking systems are an important option for guests who actively use modern Internet technologies. With their help, a person can quickly book a table at his favorite restaurant, anywhere - in a traffic jam or at a meeting. And if a restaurant does not keep up with the times, then it risks losing such customers.
On the other hand, we must honestly admit: for now, online booking services are more useful to guests than to the establishment, and restaurants cooperate with them only because of the popularity of mobile technologies. From a profitability point of view, online booking services are not an additional source for attracting guests, but rather an intermediary claiming a certain percentage of the check.
Plus, working with such services is an additional burden for restaurant staff, who, in addition to communicating with guests, spend time and effort communicating with reservation service managers. In addition, the reservation systems themselves are still far from perfect: there are serious shortcomings in the payment scheme and guest verification, software malfunctions periodically occur, etc.
Today, online bookings make up a very small percentage of total Tiki Bar bookings. And the no-show rate for online bookings is much higher compared to standard phone bookings. There is a simple psychological factor at work here: the more effort a person puts into booking a table - making a call - the more seriously they take it, and booking online with one touch creates the illusion of optionality.
In general, for now, online booking services are more of an additional option for the convenience of our guests, which does not generate income for Tiki Bar. Indeed, today the mere fact of having or not having an online reservation is not a decisive factor for a client to visit a restaurant.
Dmitry Stilin, Marketing Director of Pub Life Group (Tap & Barrel Pub , The Tipsy Pub , Lion's Head Pub andDrunken Duck Pub )
Some may think that it would be better for guests to go to their own website, but online booking services spend money on promotion, and your establishment still finds itself in an advantageous position by being listed on them. The number of bookings through services varies greatly depending on the restaurant concept. Most of the bookings made through these services are for so-called family restaurants.
Any service that places you on its pages is a plus for the establishment, regardless of the number of reservations through it. Regular customers will still book directly. After all, every normal restaurant has online reservations on its website and such services are not fundamental. But since they exist, the restaurant needs to be present at them to increase the reach of its audience. 10% of the check is an ideal collaboration system that does not burden staff with third-party calculations and memorization. A specific amount per guest is not always a profitable option for a restaurant, and with a large flow it is simply inconvenient.
Valeria Efremova, general director of the restaurant " »
For some reason this system did not work at all for us. We cooperate with many companies, but there is no significant effect. This happens for a number of reasons. For example, the human factor. So, an operator who accepts a request for a banquet by phone (and often guests call) is more likely to persuade you to choose a restaurant that is more profitable for him - maybe he loves it himself, or maybe he receives a separate commission for this. Tables are booked in advance mainly for a romantic or business meeting. The company often already has a favorite place. If the meeting is a business one, then most likely the establishment will be chosen on a territorial basis (it depends on your luck, and the restaurant cannot change anything), but lovers will most likely pay enough attention to the search, and if yours is romantic and delicious (and That’s exactly how it is with us), they will definitely come.
As you can see, the probability of booking a table is not too high. Add to this competition, cancellations/no-shows, reservation speculation (for holidays, for example), etc. - we get the result of our restaurant - this is 1-2 tables per week on average. Therefore, we do not make special bets on these services. We place ourselves on them, of course, “to be,” but we have no illusions.
The most effective method of online promotion is still Yandex Direct.
How many guests must such a service bring to your restaurant for you to use its services?
It would seem that the answer is obvious - the more, the better. However, imagine having a full seating room with online pre-orders. At the same time, your profit is reduced by a percentage of the commission, and regular guests have nowhere to stay. I repeat, the average bill is important, not the number of people.
What needs to be done to make online booking popular among Russian users?
Any business (in the service sector) is generally based on fashion and/or laziness. You need to build on this. You can simultaneously offer the service of delivering a taxi at a certain time, pre-ordering and pre-paying the order (i.e., the guest makes an order for the evening in advance through the website - this results in a mini-banquet), a musician with a choice of a certain repertoire, etc.
This is part of the service and part of laziness. Well, making it fashionable is not so difficult. An online booking site is not a work of architectural art that, once built, cannot be fixed. You can experiment and need to promote it.
Alexey Pospehov, Managing Director of the FUTUR CAPITAL fund
Our foundation considered several projects for online table booking, both based on existing POS systems and separate software.
This solution is certainly a cool and necessary feature, but everything is as usual - it depends on the peculiarities of local Russian business processes.
Let's start with the fact that 90% of the POS systems market in Russia belongs to the company UCS (software brand - RKEEPER), which is distinguished by a total Soviet approach to its products. 50% of this company was recently bought by Rambler, thanks to which they are closed on the entire HORECA eco-system - from table reservations to the integration of fintech mobile services with a loyalty program.
The second part of booking tables rests on the personal factor, when the manager of the establishment with one wave of his hand, for the sake of a “more important guest,” can cancel the reservation submitted online, as a result of which the reputation of not so much the establishment, but the mobile service that provided this service, will suffer.
There was no linkage to the average bill in our projects.
We saw the most suitable business model, where establishments paid a certain fixed price (from 50 to 350 rubles) for a person who came through such a service. All other solutions are quite difficult to implement, and also depend on the motivation of local personnel.
In any case, if Rambler successfully reorganizes the UCS company and introduces new features into its RKEEPER software, then it will be impossible to compete with the company that owns 90% of the market. For its part, Rambler will be able to offer restaurants, in exchange for a small commission, expanded options for the loyalty program, payment from smartphones, and other solutions that will force restaurant managers to use their solutions.
Loading...