Table Reservations With No Booking Fee: How It Works on Restrofi

Most restaurants still take table bookings the old way: a phone call during the dinner rush, a name scribbled in a register, and a hope that the guest actually turns up. The alternative has usually been a listing platform that charges per cover or takes a cut, and owns the guest relationship.

Restrofi now has table reservations built in. Guests book on your outlet's own page, your team runs the day's bookings from the same dashboard as orders and tables, and Restrofi charges no booking fee, cover charge or commission to you or your guests.

How a guest books a table

Every outlet on Premium or above gets a booking page at restrofi.com/<your-outlet>/book. A guest:

1. Picks a date, a time slot and the number of guests.
2. Verifies their phone number with a WhatsApp code, so every booking has a real, reachable number behind it.
3. Gets a confirmation (or a "request received" message, if you accept bookings by hand) and a link to view or cancel the booking.

A few hours before the booking, the guest gets a reminder with the same link. If they can't make it, they cancel in one tap and the seats go back on sale.

Parties bigger than your online limit are not turned away. They are passed to your event enquiry form with the date and guest count already filled in, so a 25-person birthday becomes an event lead instead of a lost booking.

You set the rules

Only the business owner changes booking rules. Managers and staff with table access run the day's bookings, but cannot change the policy.

• Slots and limits. Choose your booking slots and how many seats can be booked online in each, so walk-ins always have room. Late-night slots past midnight work for bars.
• Accept or auto-confirm. By default your team accepts each request. If you'd rather not, switch to instant confirmation.
• Phone and walk-in bookings. Staff add bookings taken over the phone or at the door from the Reservations tab, so there is one list, not a list and a register.

No-shows, without charging anyone

No-shows are the reason restaurants ask for deposits. Restrofi handles them without taking money:

• Every booking is tied to a verified phone number.
• The reminder makes it easy to cancel instead of just not showing up.
• A guest who hasn't arrived is marked late, and a booking that is never seated is closed at the end of its slot, with no penalty.
• No-shows are recorded per outlet. A guest with 2 no-shows in 90 days at your outlet can still book, but each new booking needs your team to accept it.

From booking to bill

When the guest arrives, staff tap Seat. That opens the table's running bill straight away, so orders from the waiter app, the Connect till or the table QR all land on the same bill. The booking, the table and the bill stay linked, which makes it easy to see later who booked, who came and what they spent.

Where updates go

Booking updates and reminders go out on WhatsApp when the outlet has the WhatsApp add-on, and by email otherwise. The guest's booking page always shows the current status. Your team gets an alert in the dashboard and the Restrofi app for every new request.

Getting started

If you are on Premium or above, open Reservations in your dashboard, set your slots and online seat limit, and share your booking link on Instagram, Google Business Profile and WhatsApp. Bookings start arriving in the same place you already run your floor.