Table nine is on coffee. The party booked onto it is standing at the host stand with their coats still on. What you say to them next is the job.
Three decisions come round again every service: how long you hold a table for each booking, what you do when the table hasn't cleared and the next party is at the door, and how much of the room you keep open for walk-ins.
Search the phrase and you get platforms. The roundups tend to finish by asking how big your restaurant is and which POS you run, which hands the decision back to you.
So there's no ranking here. This is about running the book once you've got one. The flow around a single booking, taking it, confirming it, the reminder, the deposit, is a different job. Our guide to streamlining restaurant reservations covers that one.
How long you hold a table for one booking
Books tend to break in the same place. Someone sets one duration at setup, and after that everything inherits it. Two guests at a two-top, eight people on a set menu, Tuesday lunch, Friday second seating: same number. By the middle of service, the plan on the screen and the room in front of you have stopped describing the same evening.
The decision is narrower than it first looks. A hold only does any work on a table that has another booking behind it. On those, set it at the long end of what that party plausibly does rather than at the average. A short guess doesn't land on the table you cut short. It lands on the party after them, and then on the party after that. Where nothing is waiting behind the table, the number matters much less.
Which is the argument for setting the hold booking by booking rather than once for the house. In FineDine, dining duration is one of the reservation settings, and how far it can be broken down depends on your own setup. If you want different kinds of party on different lengths, that is the setting to look at.
One limit, said plainly. The duration is a plan for your own floor. It isn't an agreement with the guest, and nothing on a screen makes a table stand up on time. What a hold length you have actually thought about buys you is finding out before the guests arrive that two bookings want the same table.
The table hasn't cleared and the next party is at the door
Start with where the seated party actually is in their meal. Plates cleared and the bill down is a matter of minutes. Mid-course isn't minutes. It's a course. Your options are different in the two cases, so it's worth looking before you promise anything.
Then look at the room rather than the book. Is there a table the arriving party fits on in the next few minutes, including one you'd rather not give away? On the FineDine screen you can see whether that table has another booking behind it and at what time, and that is what decides what you can offer the party at the door. Some guests will take the worse table now over the right table later, but only if someone offers it.
Then say something true to the party at the door. A wait you can hold to does more for you than a reassurance repeated three times. When you haven't got a number yet, tell them what you're waiting on: they've just had the bill, we're clearing it now.
The split of authority is worth settling before the night it matters. A host can offer a drink, a different table and a real wait time. Moving a booking to another table, breaking a hold, or telling a party the wait is long enough that they should eat elsewhere is a manager's call. Both of those answers cost money, and someone has to own which one you paid.
Then there's the part you can't do. You can clear the plates, bring the bill, move coffee to the bar. You can't ask a paying table to leave. The book doesn't change that.
How much of the room stays open for walk-ins
Walk-in space is easier to run as a list of tables than as a percentage. Which tables depends on the room. Small ones and the ones near the door are usually quick to seat and re-seat, so they're often worth more to you open than booked. Six-tops usually run the other way. Whether that holds where you work is something you can settle by counting.
Two numbers, at the host stand, every hour of service, for two weeks: how many walk-ins you turned away, and how many booked tables sat empty past their hold. The second one you can check against your booking records in FineDine; the walk-ins you turned away are in no record anywhere, which is why that count stays on paper. A fortnight of it tells you which way you're wrong, and it'll probably say something different about Tuesday than about Saturday. Move the walk-in list one or two tables in that direction and count again.
There's a ceiling on all of this and it isn't in the dining room. If the pass can't send more covers at eight, opening more tables to walk-ins mostly moves the queue from the door into the kitchen. Every ticket already in it waits longer. Before you decide the floor is the constraint, look at the covers you actually sent per hour on your busiest nights.
What the software decides and what you decide
The floor plan and the book are two separate things, and the room comes first: a booking has to land on a table that exists. With the dining duration set in FineDine, a busy Friday shows you that two bookings want the same table while the guests are still at home, not when the second party is at the door. The guest's note stays on the booking, so it reaches the host stand: whoever opens the list before service sees the high chair, the birthday, the guest who can't manage stairs.
None of that decides your hold length, the over-run or the walk-in list. The system doesn't know your grill cook called in sick, that the terrace is unusable in the wind, or that table nine has been sitting since the first seating. What it does save you is having to remember how last month went: your reservation data has its own tab in AI Reports, which updates hourly and reads over 7, 14, 28 or 90 days, or a range you set yourself, against the period before it. Plan scope changes over time, so the pricing page is the place to check what's included where.
| What you know when the booking is made | Which way it moves the hold | What happens if the hold runs short |
|---|---|---|
| Party of six or more | Longer. Ordering, splitting the bill and getting out of the door all stretch with the group | The booking behind it starts late, and the section runs behind for the rest of the night |
| Set menu or tasting | Longer, but you can predict it. The kitchen's pacing sets the length rather than the guests | Cut it short and the last course lands in the next party's time |
| A la carte at your busiest hour | Longer than the same booking on a quiet night, because tickets sit in the queue | You hold to a quiet-night length and the table over-runs most Fridays |
| Last seating on that table | Barely matters. Nothing is waiting behind it | You turn a table for nobody, and the guest can feel it |
| A note on the booking: birthday, anniversary, first date | Longer. Cake, photos and a slow goodbye are time nobody books for | The note only moves the hold if whoever opens the list before service reads it |
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you decide the hold length for each type of booking?
- Take the numbers off your own floor rather than a standard chart. A fortnight of closed bills will show you how long a six-top, a set menu and a two-top actually took from seating to payment, and the spread inside each group tells you more than its average does. Check them again whenever the menu or the kitchen's pacing changes, because the old numbers stop describing the room before anyone notices.
- What is the best restaurant reservation system?
- Best for every room isn't really a thing, which is why the roundups end up asking about your size and your POS. Test the candidates against your own worst service instead. Put a real week of bookings in, the Friday you dread included, and watch whether the tool shows you a collision before the guests arrive or after.
- What is the best free reservation software for restaurants?
- Free tiers vary too much for a ranking to survive contact with your book, and the fee usually isn't the part that hurts. Three things to ask before you move the book across: can the hold length be set per booking rather than once for the whole house, does the guest note reach whoever's standing at the host stand, and what happens in the month you go past whatever the free tier counts.
- How long should you hold a table for a guest who is running late?
- Decide the grace period once, write it down, and let the host apply it without calling you. The number itself matters less than the whole floor using the same one. Before you set it, check whether the table has another booking behind it. A late guest on the last seating of the night costs you far less than the same guest at seven.
- Is a floor plan the same as a reservation system?
- No. The floor plan is your room: areas like the terrace, the inside room and the upper floor, with the tables in each. A reservation is a different record: who is coming, at what time, and on which table. The room needs defining first, because a booking has to land on a table that exists.
