Feature · Booking rules
Turn times and pacing your restaurant kitchen agreed to
Free seats are not the same as a kitchen that can feed them. Write down how long each table stays and how many covers the pass can take in half an hour, and the bookings will follow it — online, on the phone and at the door.
Rules are set by the owner or manager once, then changed whenever the menu or the season does.
The settings, in the order a service is built
Services
Lunch and dinner — or breakfast and a late bar — as separate services, each with its own days, its own rooms and its own booking interval. The terrace can serve lunch only; the bar can stay open after the kitchen closes.
Turn times by party size
A couple keeps a table for an hour and a half, a six for two and a quarter, a twelve for three. The table is offered again only after the turn you set for that size.
Pacing
A ceiling on covers or bookings in any rolling window: no more than twenty covers starting within thirty minutes, for example, however many chairs are empty.
The online window
How far ahead the online book opens, how late before a sitting it closes, and the smallest and largest party that may book without calling.
Exceptions, without rewriting the rules
- Close the whole restaurant or one room for a date, and keep the reason with it — refurbishment, a staff party, the terrace in a storm.
- Hold a table back from online bookings: the regulars' corner on a Friday stays yours to give.
- Above a party size you choose, online bookings arrive as requests and hold nothing until confirmed.
Why the times on your booking page look the way they do
When a guest asks for four people on Saturday, the times they see are the ones that pass every rule at once: a table of the right size is free for the whole turn, the pacing window still has room, the service is open in the room they chose, and nothing is closed or held. The host stand asks the same question when someone rings, so the phone and the website never give two different answers.
Questions about the rules
Can the rules be different on a Saturday?
Each service has its own days, so a Saturday dinner can be a separate service with its own turn times and pacing.
Do the rules stop my staff overriding them?
The online page always obeys them. At the host stand your staff can still seat someone where they judge it right; the rules guide the suggestion, they do not lock the door.
Is there a fee for more rules or more services?
No. Every setting is part of the one monthly price per location.
See the rules at work
Write the rules once, on opening day
One e-mail when Slotora for restaurants opens, and nothing more.
Tell me when it opens