Venue type · Pubs and gastropubs

Table booking for pubs whose kitchen keeps restaurant hours and whose bar does not

The kitchen might stop at nine while the bar carries on until eleven, and the people leaning on it have never booked anything in their lives. A pub's booking system has to cover the food, and leave the rest of the building alone.

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What it does not do is said where it comes up.

Wet-led, food-led, and most pubs in between

A wet-led local takes a handful of bookings a week: a birthday table, the darts team, a wake after the funeral. A food-led gastropub fills like a restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights, often booked days ahead, with tables turning in something like an hour and a half to two hours. Most pubs are neither. They book the dining room at the weekend, take whoever comes through the door on a Tuesday, and shift along that line every time the garden opens or the clocks go back.

That is why a pub needs a dial rather than an on-off switch for online booking. Three settings do most of the work: which rooms the booking page may offer, how many tables stay back for the door, and the hours the kitchen actually cooks — which are rarely the hours on the licence.

How each dial is set

Food hours of their own

Lunch and dinner are services with their own days, their own last seating and their own walk-in cut-off, after which the host stand warns anyone about to seat a party for food. The pub stays open; the booking page simply stops offering a table once the kitchen has called it a night. A late Friday food service can run past midnight if yours does.

Only the rooms you want booked

Draw the dining room, the snug and the garden as separate areas, each on a floor plan to scale. A service can be tied to some of them only, so the booking page offers the dining room and the bar never appears on it at all.

Tables kept for the regulars

Hold the corner table for the regulars for the evening, and set a time for it to go back on the booking page if nobody has claimed it — say five o'clock. Their guest card shows the visits, so the new barman knows whose table it has been for years. The darts team that eats every Tuesday is booked once as a standing booking, week after week, until a date you choose — up to half a year at a time.

Quiz night and match days

Close the back room to online bookings for one evening with a reason — the quiz, the big match — while the dining room stays bookable. Staff can still seat people in it by hand.

The door on a busy night

Four people come in at ten to eight wanting to eat. Tap four on the host stand and they are on the best free table for four — the one that does not break up a table somebody has booked for half past eight. If there is nothing, they go on the waiting list the staff keep, with an estimate worked out from the tables actually on their way to the bill, and they can wait at the bar with a pint, which is where they wanted to be anyway.

When the bar is three deep, the people at the back do not have to queue to be put on the list: a QR card by the door lets them add themselves from their phones with a name, how many they are and a mobile number, and the host stand rings when they do. When they are seated or give up, one tap takes them off. Nobody is sent a text — the page they joined on tells them you will ring — so you call their mobile, or their name across the bar, as you do now.

December, and the tables of twelve

Work Christmas parties arrive as tables of ten to twenty. Name the combinations of tables that can be pushed together and what each seats, so the booking lands on a long table that exists.
Above a party size you choose, an online booking becomes a request you confirm, rather than a table taken without a word.
The pre-service briefing puts the big tables and the occasions guests named at the top of the evening, so the kitchen knows about the fourteen at half seven before the fourteen do.
Many pubs take a deposit for December parties. With your Stripe account connected, a booking rule asks for one from every party above the size you set, and the money lands in your own account.

What stays with the rest of the pub

Slotora runs the pub's bookings, orders at the table, the kitchen screen and the bill. It does not talk to the till or card machine you already have. A bill marked settled on the host stand records that the table has paid; it moves no money. Reminders to guests go out from Slotora by e-mail; it sends no text messages.

Questions from pubs

Can the kitchen stop taking bookings at nine while we stay open?

Yes. The dinner service has its own last seating, so the booking page stops offering tables after it, and its own walk-in cut-off, after which the host stand warns before seating anyone for food. The pub's opening hours are not involved.

We take almost no bookings midweek. Is it worth it?

Set services only on the days you book. Midweek walk-ins are still seated in one tap on the floor plan, and the reports show how much of your trade walks in.

Can the garden be bookable in summer only?

Yes. A service can be limited to dates and to some rooms, so the garden appears on the booking page from the date you choose and disappears after it.

Are you a pub till as well?

Slotora takes the orders at the table, sends them to the kitchen screen and runs the bill. It does not connect to the till or card machine you already have.

Before the next busy Friday

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