Guide · Walk-ins
Walk-ins on a full night: running the door when every restaurant table is taken
In a pub or a neighbourhood place, the bookings fill the room by eight and the street fills the door. How the next hour goes depends on decisions made on Monday, a sentence said at the door, and whether anybody notices the table that frees up at twenty past.
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On Monday: decide what the door gets
If every table can be booked online, a full Friday has nothing left for the regular who never books. Many pubs keep a few tables back for the door — the high tables by the bar, the two-tops by the window. Put a hold on each of them for the evening and the booking page stops offering them, so the website cannot sell the tables you meant for walking trade. A hold is one table for one window, so it is a job for Friday morning, not a setting you make once.
Decide too when walk-ins stop. A kitchen that closes at nine cannot seat a four at ten to. Set the time and the host stand warns before anyone seats a walk-in after it; a bar that keeps serving can set it to closing time instead. It is a warning, not a lock: the host can still say yes to the couple who only want a starter.
At the door: the queue that builds itself
At half seven the person on the door is also seating, clearing and answering the phone. Every name they write down by hand is a minute not spent on the room. Put the waiting-list QR card where the queue forms — on the door, on the A-board, on the bar — and let people add themselves.
A guest scans it, gives a name, the party size and a mobile number, and sees their place in the line with an estimate of the wait. The tablet and phones at the stand ring as each one joins. Nobody downloads anything or makes an account; the host still adds anyone who would rather just say their name.
The sentence that matters most: the quoted wait
“About twenty minutes” said to keep someone from leaving is the most expensive sentence at the door. Forty minutes later they are at the bar, angry, and the table they finally get is a table that could have gone to someone who would have been happy to wait the honest forty.
Quote the wait you would bet on. The estimate on the screen is worked out from the tables actually heading for the bill and the parties ahead of them, not from hope. Pick the minutes you told them, and the card counts them down — so whoever is on the stand at eight can see that the Murphys were promised half an hour and are now five minutes over.
- Send them to the bar, not the pavement. A party with a drink waits longer, and spends while it does.
- Take a number for anyone who wanders off. It is on their card for your staff, one tap to call.
- Say plainly how they will hear: “We'll ring you”. Slotora does not text, and the QR page tells them the same.
When a table frees up
The table that matters on a full night is not the one due at nine; it is the one nobody expected. A booking rings to cancel at quarter past. A four pays early. On paper, it sits empty until somebody notices. On the stand, the card of the waiting party it suits says so, with one tap to seat them — and a warning if taking it would leave a bigger party further down with nothing that fits. The host decides; nothing seats itself, and the guest hears it from you.
Then tell them — at the bar, or by calling the number on the card — and press Table ready. Their hold starts. If they never come back, the party leaves the list once the hold runs out (you choose anything from 3 to 60 minutes), so a ghost is never still in the queue at ten.
On Monday again: read the door
- 1
How much of Friday walked in?
The reports split walk-ins from bookings. If a third of your covers came off the street, the tables you held back earned their keep.
- 2
How many did you turn away?
Demand you could not seat is counted with the reason. Lots of fours turned away at eight is an argument for a different table plan, not more staff.
- 3
Adjust one thing
Hold one more table back, or one fewer; move the walk-in cut-off; change what the door says about the wait. One change a week, and watch it.
Walk-ins: short answers
Should we take names at all on a quiet night?
No need: a party size is enough to seat a walk-in. The list is for when there is nowhere to put them yet.
Somebody on the list has been waiting longer, but the free table is for six and they are two. Who gets it?
The list is served first come, first served, and the screen offers the table to the first party it seats — with a warning if that leaves a bigger party further down without a fit. Then it is your call, made with the facts in front of you.
Can guests see their place after they leave the door?
They see their place and the estimate when they join. There is no page that keeps updating after that; you call them.
The walk-ins and waiting-list screen · How a freed table finds its party · Slotora for pubs · All guides