The table management system a restaurant runs its booking book on, and the free worksheet that sizes it
Taking a booking is easy. Knowing whether tonight's 9pm party of eight fits, which of your tables it fits on, what the room still has free at 7:30, and what the four people who did not turn up on Saturday actually cost you is the rest of the job, and most restaurants do it from a paper book and a memory of the room. Sittingly starts with a free worksheet that puts numbers on it: the floor plan turned into covers, the sittings each table really turns once you allow for resetting it, and what a year of no shows takes off the top. The paid plan keeps what it sized, as one book across the phone, the website and the people who walk in.
For the person who actually answers the phone
Sittingly is built for one restaurant carrying its own book, not for a group with a revenue manager. The worksheet is free because the arithmetic should be; the plan is priced for a restaurant rather than a cover, because a booking should not cost you more on a Saturday than it does on a Tuesday.
A booking book is easy to start and almost impossible to keep, and keeping it is the part that decides what a Saturday is worth
- The phone, the website and the walk in all land in the same book. Most independent restaurants run at least two books without meaning to: a diary on the host stand and a widget on the website nobody opens until service. Two books is how a table gets double sat and how a party of eight arrives to find its table is a two top. One book is not a feature, it is the whole product.
- Every booking is a party on a named table, so the room fills the way you planned it. A time and a party size is a queue, not a plan. When the booking carries the table it is on, you can see at 5pm which parts of the room are already spoken for at 8, and you can say yes to the party of six because you know exactly what has to move to fit them.
- Cancellations and no shows kept against the guest, not lost with the date. A no show costs the covers and the food, and the only thing that reduces it is knowing who does it. When the record hangs off the guest, the third time is visible before you confirm it, and a deposit policy becomes a decision you can make about one booking rather than a blanket rule that annoys everyone else.
Sittingly Pro
The worksheet tells you what the room seats. It cannot tell you, in March, that the same guest has not turned up three times. Pro keeps the book itself. Sittingly Pro is £59 a month for the whole restaurant, billed monthly, however many people take the bookings.
