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Take table reservations for wineries or restaurants

This tutorial explains how to set up table reservations for restaurants or wineries

Ray M avatar
Written by Ray M
Updated over 5 months ago

To use this app for restaurant reservations, there are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Each reservation must have a start and end time. So if you have one availability from 18:00-21:00 and a duration of 90 minutes, the app will show two timeslots by default: 18:00-19:30, 19:30-21:00. (this can be modified, see below!)

  2. For Group Bookings (ie. multiple parties can join the same time) set the maximum attendee to the group you can accommodate. For example, 20 at a time would be an attendee max of 20. For Private Bookings, set the maximum attendee to 1.

  3. The Availability should be based on either (A) your dining room capacity or (B) your individual table capacity.

    1. Dining room capacity is the easiest and most flexible implementation. This way the customers can book and when they arrive your host can decide which table they sit at.

    2. For individual table capacity, we suggest using a variant for each table type and then offering an event & availability for each. For example, counter and main dining table.

      1. Note: If your tables can grouped together, Easy Appointments does not have a visual view of your tables so this approach has a limitation

  4. You can do a minimum guest count under Edit Event, Advanced, Minimum Attendee.

Let's see this with an example. You run a restaurant with the following details.

  • You have 6 tables

  • You can seat 12 total people in your restaurant at a time (2 per table)

  • Reservations are for 90 min total

  • You are only available Friday & Saturday, 18:00-22:00

Simple Case 1: Reserve by Dining Room Capacity

In this case, we recommend setting the availability by the restaurant schedule, not the tables. So one availability 18:00-21:00 and make the event 90 min in duration. This gives you 12 people per reservation, 24 total reservations per day.

Let's say you want to stagger the appointments. For the dining room approach, if you want to have a 12 person capacity per reservation then you need multiple availabilities tied to the same dining room event

  1. Availability 1: 18:00-19:30, 19:30-21:00

  2. Availability 2: 18:30-20:00

  3. Availability 3: 19:00-20:30

  4. Availability 4: 19:30-21:00

Otherwise, if you want to have a 12 person capacity per reservation yet still stagger the time, then simply set your Timeslot Spacing to 30 minutes (Edit Event, Availability, Timeslot Spacing).

Simple Case 2: Reserve by Dining Room Capacity with two spaces

Similar to the above, but you have a Counter Space (8 people) and Table Space (6 tables, 2 people each).

In this case, create a variant

  • Variant, Event & Availability for Counter

  • Variant, Event & Availability for Dining Room

Here's an example of a restaurant reservation with Table & Counter. Variants are used to determine which space to use and one availability per variant (the dining room approach split into two rooms)

Complex Case: Reserve by Table (staggered across tables)

A common workflow for restaurants and wineries is to let customers reserve tables for a certain length of time in a staggered manner. This tutorial explains how to set this up in Easy Appointment Booking.

Referencing this example

  • You have 6 tables

  • You can seat 12 total people in your restaurant at a time

  • Reservations are for 90 min total

  • For example, you are only available Friday & Saturday, 18:00-21:30

  • You want to stagger reservations by 15 minutes. This means once a booking happens at 18:00, the next booking for the next available table must be 15 minutes later at 18:15. This gives your staff time to setup.

In this scenario, here’s how you would set it up.

  1. First, create an event. Set the duration to be 90 minutes.

  2. Create an availability for each table that you have. In this case, you would create 6 availabilities:

    1. Table A

    2. Table B

    3. Table C

    4. Table D

    5. Table E

    6. Table F

  3. For each availability, set your daily schedule to be staggered.

    1. For Table A, set Fri & Sat to 18:00-19:30, 19:30-21:00

    2. For Table B, set Fri & Sat to 18:15-19:45, 19:45-21:15

    3. For Table C, set Fri & Sat to 18:30-20:00, 20:00-21:30

    4. For Table D, set Fri & Sat to 18:45-20:15

    5. For Table E, set Fri & Sat to 19:00-20:30

    6. For Table F, set Fri & Sat to 19:15-20:45

  4. When editing your event, set the Timeslot Spacing to 15 minutes.

By setting your availability in this way, a timeslot that will show up every 15-minutes with alternating tables.

  • 18:00 (with Table A)

  • 18:15 (with Table B)

  • 18:30 (with Table C)

  • 18:45 (with Table D)

  • etc

If Table A is booked at 18:00, it will be removed for Table A but 18:15 is still bookable with Table B. The next available time for Table A will be 19:30.

We have dozens of customers using us for their restaurants. If you would like more help setting this up, please contact us via the Chat in the app or at hey@getservicify.com.

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