Practical advice to manage your reservations, reduce no-shows and grow your restaurant.
More than half of UK consumers now check hygiene ratings before choosing where to eat. Here is how the FHRS works, how to prepare for the inspection, and how to fix a low score.
Beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory, divided by food sales: one small formula decides a large part of your margin. Here is how to calculate it, in dollars and in pounds, and what to do when the number is wrong.
On Saturday you turn people away; on Tuesday you count occupied tables on one hand. Here is a concrete plan to fill your restaurant on slow nights without slashing prices: targeted offers, recurring events, local partnerships and reservations captured around the clock.
The paper book has done the job for decades, and it does it well. Here is what a digital reservation book actually adds, what it costs, and how to move from paper to screen without upsetting your service routine.
Card hold, deposit, prepaid booking: they are not the same thing. Here is how credit card holds really work for restaurant reservations, what US and UK practice looks like, how much to ask for and how to announce it without scaring guests away.
December is the busiest month of the year, and the riskiest. Here is how to run Christmas party bookings with deposits that hold up, pre-orders that save your kitchen, and a timeline that starts in September.
OpenTable, Resy, Tock, SevenRooms, Yelp Guest Manager, Toast Tables, Eat App and ViteUneTable: an honest comparison for US restaurants, with pricing checked on each vendor's own site.
OpenTable, ResDiary, TheFork Manager, SevenRooms, resOS, simpleERB, ViteUneTable: an honest comparison of restaurant booking systems for UK venues, with the pricing models explained and every claim checked on the vendor's own site.
Forget the lists of 25 random tips. Here is a prioritized action plan to attract more customers to your restaurant: start with your Google profile, turn visitors into bookings, bring guests back, then squeeze more out of every service.
Yelp Guest Manager has a great waitlist and no cover fees, but the best price requires annual billing and the Basic plan caps your covers. Here are 6 alternatives with verified pricing.
Tock now belongs to American Express and starts at $289 per month plus a 3% fee on prepayments. Here is an honest look at what it does brilliantly, what it costs, and the alternatives worth considering.
Toast Tables only makes sense inside the Toast ecosystem. Here is an honest look at what it does well, what it really costs, and the alternatives for restaurants that want reservations without the POS lock-in.