BookestoRestaurants and venues
Reservations, walk-ins and a floor map. Covers and pacing are still coming.
No card needed. Restaurants come after salons, barbershops and courts in our order, and we would rather you knew that first.
The problem
Twenty hundred hours on a Saturday
The book says eighty-four covers. Forty of them arrive between 7:45 PM and 8:15 PM because that is when people want to eat, and the pass takes the hit. Table 12 is a four-top that walked in as six. The 8:30 PM window booking has not shown and will not call. There are nine people at the door and the host is quoting forty minutes from memory.
Then for one month a year the entire business becomes something else: fixed-seating prepaid iftar, anchored to maghrib, with every enquiry arriving on WhatsApp at 11 PM and a capacity per seating rather than per slot.
A reservation system either handles covers, pacing and service periods properly, or it is a list of names with times next to it. Most of the good ones handle them. We do not yet.
What is here
In buildThe host stand and the floor
You draw your floor once: tables, their seats, their zones, where they sit. The host view then shows you the shape of the room and the state of each table.
On the stand itself: add to the walk-in queue, move a party through its stages, seat, unseat, and move a party from one table to another. Two hosts tapping at once cannot put two parties on one table.
What is not here yet
PlannedFour gaps, named
- Turn time
- How long a two-top holds a table at 7 PM on a Saturday against a Tuesday lunch. Not connected yet
- Pacing
- A cap on covers per fifteen minutes, which is the one control that stops the 8 PM slam. Not connected yet
- Service periods
- Lunch, dinner, brunch, ladies' hours, with changes per day. Not connected yet
- Party size
- Bookesto answers “is this slot free”. A restaurant needs “can I seat six at 8 PM given my turn times and what is already on the book”
These are planned and partly written, and they are not connected to your screens. That is why restaurants sit behind salons, courts, detailing, clinics and classes in our order.
Before service
What you will be able to do about the 8:30 PM that never arrives
Deposits and no-show fees
WaitingA Saturday eight-top can carry a hold, and a Tuesday two-top need not
Online card deposits and card holds are not switched on yet, and your guests pay at the venue until then.
When they go live, you will be able to ask for a deposit or a card hold depending on the date and the party size, and take full payment for a ticketed seating.
Consumer law in Europe also limits what a restaurant may keep when a guest cancels. Signups from the EU, EEA and UK stay closed for now.
Ramadan
PlannedThe month that changes the model
Fixed seatings anchored to maghrib, prepaid, with adult and child prices and a capacity per seating rather than a rolling slot grid. In the Gulf that month is a large part of the year for a lot of rooms.
Saved seasonal timetables are not built. Today, running iftar on Bookesto would mean us setting it up with you by hand, and we would rather tell you that now than in week one of Ramadan.
Moving over
In buildWhat comes across from OpenTable, SevenRooms or Zenchef
Guest profiles, in every case. OpenTable emails a guest export to the account owner from Reporting, Guest Export. SevenRooms exports clients from the interface. Zenchef keeps its API for a higher tier.
Forward reservations are the hard part, and nobody hands them over cleanly.
Bookesto imports your guest list from a CSV: you match the columns and see a preview before anything is saved. We have not yet checked a file from OpenTable or SevenRooms, so we would look at yours with you first.
Questions restaurants ask
Four straight answers
Can I run Saturday night on this today?
No. Without turn times, pacing and covers you would be running a list of names, and you already have one of those.
Talk to us if you want to help shape it.
Do you integrate with my POS?
No. In the Gulf the POS worth connecting is Foodics, and we are deliberately not starting it until covers and service periods are in place.
Will you put me on Google reservations?
Reserve with Google is coming. It is not live, and Google’s partner onboarding has its own timeline, which has not started.
Can my host and my manager have different logins?
Yes. Invite them and give each person a role.
You can check what we say
Every capability on this site carries a status that links to the row on our public roadmap saying the same thing. Anything still coming says what it is waiting on. Any figure we publish needs a source and a date.
If you want the plain list, the roadmap is the ledger.
The other five trades
Salons and barbershops
Your team, your chairs and your walk-ins on one calendar. Customers choose their stylist, colour notes stay with the client, and tips are recorded at the desk
Courts and clubs
Peak and off-peak prices, your courts on one calendar, and a booking page of your own
Clinics and treatment rooms
Bookings, intake forms and consent for aesthetic and wellness businesses. We are your diary, not your patient record. We cannot take a DHA or DOH licensed facility yet, and the page explains why
Detailing, pet grooming and rentals
Your bays on one calendar. Work stages, change orders and condition photos have no screen yet, and that page says so
Classes, tours and experiences
Plan dated classes and departures with a seat count. Customers cannot book them online yet, and that page says so. Your tour-listing sites stay where they are
If you want to shape covers and pacing, now is the useful time
We would like to talk to a small number of operators who will sit with us while turn times and pacing are designed, and who will test the host stand on a real Saturday when it is ready.
No card needed. We set up each new venue with you, and pricing is agreed before anything is charged.