Feature · Large parties
Table combinations your restaurant has agreed to, and no others
Tables 4, 5 and 6 along the banquette make a sixteen. Tables 11 and 12 by the door do not, because the door has to open. You know that; now the booking system does too.
Combinations are part of the floor plan and are included in the one monthly price.
How a combination is set up
- 1
Pick the tables
On the floor plan, choose the tables that can stand together without blocking a walkway or a fire door.
- 2
Give it a name and a size
“Banquette long table, 14 to 16” is more use at 19:00 than a list of table numbers. The seat count is yours: two four-tops pushed together often seat six, not eight.
- 3
Let the engine use it
When a party is too big for any single table, the combinations are what gets offered — online, on the phone and at the door — and only while every table in it is free.
Big bookings without the Saturday surprise
Requests above a size you choose
Set the largest party that may book online straight away. Anything bigger arrives as a request: it is in the diary, it holds no table, and nobody else is turned away for it until you have confirmed.
Longer tables stay longer
A table of twelve does not leave in ninety minutes. Turn times can differ by party size, so the combination is blocked for as long as a group that size really stays.
Hold a table
Keeping the long table back for a regular's birthday you have not written in yet? Put a hold on it, and online bookings will not take it.
On the night
The host stand shows the joined tables as one booking, so whoever is on the door knows the banquette is a single party of fifteen, and that the two-top at its end is not free just because nobody is sitting there yet.
The engine only ever offers the combinations you named. The host is not bound by them. When the group arrives with three more, or six walk in and the only free tables are 9 and 10, the host taps “Other table” (or “Combine tables” on a free one), taps each table to add it or take it away, and the bar over the plan adds up the chairs and says when they are too few. Then “Seat here”, “Move here” or “Walk-in here”. When the party thins out, “Release table 10” hands one table back and keeps them at the other.
Large party questions
Can a table be in more than one combination?
Yes. Table 5 can be part of the banquette long table and of a six with table 7. The engine never offers two combinations that share a table at the same time.
Can the host put tables together that are not a combination?
Yes, at the host stand: pick the tables on the plan for that one party. Too few chairs is a warning, not a refusal, because a spare chair is the host's call. Online bookings still only get the combinations you named.
Can I take a deposit for a group?
Yes, with your Stripe account connected: a booking rule can ask every party above the size you choose for a deposit or a card guarantee, with a no-show fee if you want one. The request step still holds no table until you say yes.
What about a private room for a whole party?
Offer it as private dining by enquiry: the guest sends an enquiry from your booking page, and you answer it. An event does not take tables off the floor plan by itself, so draw the room as its own area and close it to online bookings for that date. If the party should pay for a set menu in advance, publish it as a paid table experience: the guest pays when booking, into your own Stripe account once you have connected it.
Before the Christmas bookings start
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