Venue type · Cafés and brunch
Brunch bookings for cafés and small restaurants that mostly do not take them
Weekdays are laptops, flat whites and people who wander in. Saturday at eleven is a queue on the pavement. A café does not want every two-top booked; it wants the birthday six booked, the couple seated, and the queue told the truth.
The weekend queue joins your waiting list from a QR code by the door.
The rule most cafés already have
Ask a busy brunch place whether they take bookings and the answer is usually the same: for bigger tables, yes; for two people, just come down. The reason is turnover. A small table at brunch turns in about an hour on a weekday and an hour and a quarter at the weekend, and holding it empty for a booking that is ten minutes late costs a whole sitting. A table of six, on the other hand, needs two tables pushed together and somebody needs to know it is coming.
Most booking systems make you choose between taking every booking and taking none. The rule above is a setting, and so is the weekend that behaves differently from the week.
Making the rule hold
Online bookings from four people up
Set the smallest party that may book online. Smaller parties are not offered a table online, and the table stays for the door. You can still take a booking for two by phone when it is your regular.
Brunch on the weekend only
Make weekend brunch its own service on Saturdays and Sundays, with start times every fifteen minutes and short turn times. On weekdays there is simply nothing on the booking page.
Two-tops that become a six
Name the pairs of small tables you push together and what they seat, and a booking for six lands on that arrangement — not on a table that does not exist.
Tables kept for the door
Hold the window tables back from online booking for the morning, and give them back to the booking page at a time you set if the street is quiet.
The queue at eleven on a Saturday
Two people at the door, nothing free. Nobody behind the counter has a free hand to write names down, so the QR card taped to the door does it: they scan it, give a name, how many they are and a mobile number, and see their place in the queue and the wait. The devices behind the counter ring with each new name. The wait comes from the tables actually finishing and the parties ahead of them — which is why it can be a number you would say out loud. Regulars who would rather just tell you are put on the same list by hand.
When a table for two comes free, seat them straight from the list onto it in one tap. If they gave up, one tap takes them off; a party you called who never came back drops off the list by itself once your hold time runs out. Nobody is texted: the page they joined from tells them you will ring when the table is ready, so keep the phone by the till.
What the café learns from it
- How much of the week walks in, from the reports — the number that tells you whether bookings are worth more of your tables or fewer.
- How many parties you had to turn away, with the reason recorded for each.
- Average party size and how often tables turn, so the weekend floor can be set for the parties it really gets.
The tables, the orders and the bill
Slotora decides who sits where, takes orders at the table and from the table's QR code, and runs the bill.
Questions from cafés
Can bookings be weekend-only?
Yes. A service exists only on the days you give it, so a café can have brunch bookable on Saturday and Sunday and nothing bookable during the week.
Do walk-ins need to be entered at all?
Only if you want the floor plan to know about them. Seating a walk-in is one tap on the party size, and doing it means the next booking is never offered a table that is already taken.
Can a laptop table be given a shorter time?
Turn times are set by party size and by service, not by guest. A table for one or two at weekend brunch can have a shorter time than the same table on a Tuesday.
For the next Saturday queue
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