Practical advice to manage your reservations, reduce no-shows and grow your restaurant.
A reserved table that stays empty is pure lost revenue. Here are 7 concrete, complementary fixes to reduce no-shows in your restaurant, from automatic confirmations to card holds.
QR code menus save on printing and keep prices up to date, yet surveys show most diners would rather have paper. An honest look at when a QR menu helps your restaurant, when it hurts, and the checklist for doing it properly.
A private room that sells is a second business inside your restaurant: predictable revenue, known headcounts, corporate clients who come back every quarter. Here is how to price it, sell it and protect it.
Fee caps, the 14-day consultation, smoke-free seating, accessibility rules: the permanent pavement licence regime explained simply, plus the question nobody covers, how to handle bookings for a capacity that depends on the British weather.
OpenTable bills $149 to $499 a month plus per-cover network fees; Resy charges a flat $289 to $459. Here is an honest head-to-head on pricing, diner networks, no-show tools and guest data, with a third option both sides ignore.
Entity formation, EIN, business licenses, county health inspections, the liquor license question, workers' comp, ADA: every step to open a restaurant in the US, in the right order, with official sources and a realistic timeline.
Company registration, FSA food business registration 28 days before opening, premises and personal licences, HACCP, employer duties: every step to open a restaurant in the UK, in the right order, with the official links.
Mother's Day was OpenTable UK's biggest dining day of 2025, and most of the bookings arrive in the final week. Here is how to plan sittings, price the set menu, take deposits on big tables and protect the busiest Sunday lunch of the year.
A table of 20 can make your best service of the week, or ruin it if nobody shows. Set menus, deposits, card holds, minimum spend, private dining: here is how to secure and profit from large group bookings.
No, you do not need to post every day. Here is how a restaurant attracts local diners with Instagram in a few hours a week: an optimized profile, 2 to 3 well-chosen posts, useful Stories and properly disclosed creator partnerships.
You don't need a 10% price rise to earn more. A couple of dollars extra per cover, every day, changes your month. Menu engineering, suggestion timing, dessert scripts, set menus: here are the levers that actually work on the floor.
Your Google rating is the first thing potential guests check. Here is how reviews influence your local ranking, how to collect more without breaking the rules (or the law), and how to reply well.