Restaurant Operations
Restaurant Reservation Systems: What to Look For
A good restaurant reservation system lets guests ask for a table where they already are — your menu, your website, your Google profile — and lets your team answer quickly from one list that also holds phone bookings and walk-ins. Before choosing one, check five things: how a guest books and changes a booking, who decides whether a booking is accepted, how the guest is kept informed, how no-shows and walk-ins are handled, and what it costs you per booking or per guest.
How guests book
- Where can a guest start a booking — your menu link, your website, your social profiles?
- Does the guest see real time slots, or type a time and hope?
- Does the guest get a reference they can use to cancel or change it themselves?
- Can the guest add the booking to their calendar?
- Is the booking page available in the languages your guests speak?
Who decides: automatic or confirmed by staff
Some systems fill tables automatically from a model of your room; others treat each booking as a request your team confirms. Automatic allocation saves clicks in a large, predictable room. Requests suit small rooms, flexible layouts and teams who want to decide which guests sit where. Ask which one a system does — and whether it can tell you that a table is already taken at that time before you confirm.
Keeping the guest informed
- What does the guest receive when the booking is confirmed, changed or cancelled — an email, a text message, nothing?
- Who pays for text messages, if the system sends them?
- Can a guest who left no email or phone still book, and how will you reach them?
No-shows, walk-ins and phone calls
| Situation | Ask |
|---|---|
| A guest does not come | Can staff mark a no-show, and is it kept in the booking history? |
| A guest books by phone | Can staff add it to the same list as online bookings? |
| Guests arrive without a booking | Is there a waitlist, and how are guests called when a table is ready? |
| Bookings arrive from AI assistants | Can assistants send requests, and are they labelled? |
Fees and data
- Is there a charge per booking or per guest, and does it apply to bookings from your own website?
- Whose guest list is it: can you export bookings and contact details?
- Does the system market other restaurants to guests who booked with you?
Guest details from bookings are part of your first-party guest data.
Reservations with Thmenu
With Thmenu, guests pick a day, a time slot and the party size from your menu or restaurant website, and receive a booking code they can use to cancel online or add the booking to their calendar. Each booking arrives as a notification in the panel, where staff confirm, seat, cancel, mark a no-show or complete it; a guest who left an email address is emailed about each change. Staff can add bookings taken by phone and assign a table, and the panel warns when that table is already booked at that time. Bookings are requests your team confirms — Thmenu does not model table capacity per slot. Walk-ins can join a waitlist from the menu; Thmenu sends no text messages, so staff call guests out loud or by phone. Restaurants listed in the Thmenu directory can also receive booking requests from AI assistants.