Venue type · Sunday lunch
Sunday roast bookings without every table landing at one o'clock in your restaurant
Sunday lunch is one long service with a crush in the middle. Everybody asks for one, the tables are the biggest of the week, the kitchen has only so much beef, and the family of nine who never arrive cost more than any other no-show you will have.
Deposits for big tables go through your own Stripe account, once you have connected it. Guests get their reminder by e-mail.
What a Sunday actually looks like
In most pubs and family restaurants Sunday lunch runs from around noon into the late afternoon. The bookings come in through the week, many by phone, and pile up in the middle: half past twelve to half past one is full by Thursday, while three o'clock is still empty on Saturday night. The parties are bigger than on any other day — grandparents, a pushchair, a high chair, a table of eight that becomes ten on the morning. Tables turn more slowly, because nobody at a Sunday lunch is in a hurry.
The kitchen sets the real limit. A carvery or a pass plating roasts can only send so many plates in a quarter of an hour, and when the beef runs out, it runs out. A booking system that offers every free table at one o'clock is doing the kitchen no favours.
Setting up the Sunday
- 1
Make Sunday lunch its own service
A service on Sundays only, from your first table to your last seating, with start times every fifteen or thirty minutes. Weekday lunch keeps its own hours and rules.
- 2
Cap the covers per quarter of an hour
A pacing ceiling counts covers arriving in a rolling window. Once one o'clock has its forty, the booking page offers quarter past or half past instead — and the pass stays calm.
- 3
Give big tables longer
Turn times are set by party size: a couple might have an hour and a half, a table of eight two hours and a quarter. Nobody is promised a table the eight will still be sitting at.
- 4
Decide where big parties stop booking themselves
Name the tables you are willing to push together and what they seat. Above a size you choose, an online booking becomes a request you confirm, so the family of twelve talks to you first.
- 5
If you prefer two sittings, set two
Some kitchens seat everybody at twelve and again at half past two. That is two Sunday services, each with a single start time.
On the day
The briefing before the doors
Before noon the team sees the big tables, the people coming for the first time and the occasions guests named when booking — a christening lunch, a ninetieth birthday — so the cake is not a surprise to the kitchen.
When the beef runs out
Slotora knows tables, not joints. When the kitchen calls it, close the rest of the afternoon to online bookings with a reason; staff can still seat anyone by hand.
Families who walk in
A walk-in party is seated in one tap on the best free table that a later booking does not need. Nobody has to work out at 13:40 whether the six-top is free until three.
The grandparents arrive at five to one and the rest are parking: mark the booking arrived, give them a drink, and seat the table when everyone is in. A party marked arrived is never offered to you as a no-show while you wait for the rest. And print the day sheet for the pass before noon — every table with its covers, its time and any allergy or diet your staff have written on the guest's card — so the gluten-free Yorkshire is planned at eleven, not discovered at one.
The table of nine that does not come
Marked as a no-show, it stays on the guest's card with a count. Next time they ring for Sunday, whoever answers the phone sees it before saying yes. With your Stripe account connected, a booking rule can ask big Sunday tables for a deposit or a card guarantee. Each guest is e-mailed a reminder with the link to change or cancel, and a quick call to the big tables on Saturday still does no harm.
Sunday lunch questions
Can Sunday have different turn times from Saturday night?
Yes. Turn times and pacing can belong to a service, so Sunday lunch carries its own and Saturday dinner keeps its own.
We stop seating walk-ins at two on Sundays. Can the system hold us to that?
Each service has its own walk-in cut-off, separate from its last seating. After it, the host stand warns whoever is about to seat a walk-in; it warns rather than refuses, because the decision is the host's.
Can guests change the numbers on the morning?
Yes. From the link they are shown after booking, a guest can change the party size, cancel, or move to another time that is really free — half past two instead of one — without an account. Inside your late window the page asks them to ring you instead.
Get the Sunday book off paper
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