Venue type · Private dining and groups
Group and private dining bookings for restaurants: the table side, done properly
Every group booking has two halves. One is the room, the tables, the date and the headcount. The other is the enquiry, the set menu and the money. Slotora does the first half, takes the enquiry and puts the set menu on your booking page. With your Stripe account connected, it takes the deposit or the set-menu payment as well; minimum spends and contracts stay with you.
A group's deposit goes through your own Stripe account, once you have connected it. A set menu can be paid for when booking, as a paid event on that same account. Minimum spends and private-hire contracts are not in Slotora at all.
How group bookings usually arrive
Ten to twenty-five people for a birthday, a leaving do, a work dinner or a wake. They ring or e-mail rather than book online, they change the number twice before the day, and they want either their own room or a long table that does not cut the main room in half. In December they arrive every night of the week.
For the restaurant the risk is on the floor as much as on the invoice: the private room booked out to a couple at seven when the twenty arrive at eight, or a long table made of tables that were promised to somebody else. That part a booking system should simply prevent.
The table half
The private room is a room
Draw it on the floor plan like the dining room, with its own tables. On an ordinary night it takes ordinary bookings; on the night it is hired, close it to online bookings with a reason, and staff can still seat it by hand.
Long tables that exist
Name the combinations of tables you are willing to push together and what each seats. A party of sixteen is offered an arrangement your room can actually make.
Big parties ask before they book
Above a party size you choose, an online booking becomes a request you confirm, so the group talks to you before the table is theirs.
The kitchen knows on the day
The pre-service briefing lists tonight's large parties and the occasion they named, so the twenty at eight are not news to anyone at half past seven.
When the organiser rings
- The booking is taken at the host stand against the real free times, and the organiser is found by name or phone if they have booked before.
- Anything agreed on the phone — the cake at ten, the room until midnight — goes in the booking note.
- When the number changes, the organiser can change it from the booking link; staff move the party to another table or time if it no longer fits.
The commercial half: the enquiry, the set menu and the deposit
Private dining can be put on your booking page as something guests enquire about rather than book: they send the date, the size of the party and a message, and you reply. A set menu evening can be offered as a bookable table experience instead, with its own dates, times, capacity, party limits and your own questions — dietary needs, allergies — asked when the guest books; each guest gets a ticket with a code, and the host stand has the door list to check them in.
An event does not take tables off the floor plan on its own. On the night you hire the room out, close it to online bookings as well, and the table side stops anyone double-booking it.
A set menu evening can also be sold as a paid table experience: the guest pays when booking, into your own Stripe account once you have connected it, and a payment that finds no seats left is refunded at once.
A group booking can carry a deposit or a card guarantee under your booking rules, through the same Stripe account, settled after the visit: refunded, kept as a fee, or the hold released.
What is still not there: a minimum spend, a contract or an invoice. Those stay in your e-mail and your spreadsheet.
Questions about groups
Can the private room be bookable on normal nights?
Yes. It is a room like any other until you close it for a date and time, with a reason; then the booking page stops offering it.
Can a large group book online at all?
You decide. Set the largest party that may book online, and the size above which a booking becomes a request you confirm.
Can I see who organised last year's Christmas dinner?
The organiser's guest card shows their visits and any no-shows or late cancellations, so you know who you are talking to.
Before the party season
We e-mail you once, when Slotora for restaurants opens in the UK or Ireland.
Tell me when it opens