Booking capacity: how full should the diary be?

Every restaurant has to decide how much of its room to sell in advance. Sell too little and tables sit empty while guests who would have booked go elsewhere. Sell too much and there is no room for walk-ins, no slack for a party that stays late, and a kitchen swamped by everyone arriving at once. Booking capacity is the decision about where between those two the diary should sit, and it is rarely the same for every service.

Many venues never make the decision explicitly. They accept bookings until the room looks full, or set a single limit years ago and never change it. Both approaches leave money on the table on some nights and create chaos on others.

This guide covers how to decide booking capacity: what share of the room to sell ahead by service and season, how many covers to accept in each half hour, how capacity interacts with walk-ins and no-shows, and how to read your own figures to get it right. Every figure in it is an example.

Booking capacity has two parts, and both matter.

The first is how many covers the room can hold over a service: the number of seats, how many times each can be used, and how many of those uses you sell in advance. A room of 60 seats that turns once and a half in an evening has about 90 covers to sell.

The second is how many covers the kitchen and floor can handle in a short period. A room may have twenty free tables at seven-thirty, but a kitchen that can comfortably start 30 covers in a half hour cannot serve 70. Booking capacity is limited by whichever runs out first: tables or the kitchen's pace. Our guide to pacing covers so the kitchen never drowns covers the second in detail.

A single capacity figure for the whole room ignores how differently each service trades. A weekday lunch fills mostly with walk-ins and short visits. A Friday dinner fills mostly with bookings and long visits. A Sunday lunch fills with families who book early and stay. Each needs its own booking capacity.

Set capacity separately for each service you run: weekday lunch, weekday dinner, Friday and Saturday dinner, Sunday lunch, and so on. The principles of capacity planning in any business apply: match what you sell to what you can deliver, in each period, rather than on average.

The share of the room to sell ahead depends on three things for each service: how many guests try to book, how many walk in, and how many no-shows you get.

Write the decision down for each service: what share of covers to sell in advance, and what to keep for walk-ins.

Even when the room has space, the arrival pattern decides whether service works. If the booking diary lets 40 guests arrive at seven-thirty, the kitchen receives 40 orders within the same few minutes, and every table waits.

Set a limit on how many covers can arrive in each half hour or quarter hour, based on what the kitchen and floor can start comfortably. An invented example: a kitchen that can start 25 covers in a half hour, in a room of 80 seats, should spread an 80-cover evening across at least four half hours, not two.

Spreading arrivals is the single biggest improvement many venues can make to their booking capacity. The room fills just as much; it simply fills in a way the kitchen can cook for.

Walk-ins are valuable: they are often guests who live or work nearby, they spend well, and they fill tables bookings miss. A venue that sells every table in advance turns them all away.

Decide how many tables to hold back for walk-ins in each service, from your own records of how many walk-ins you usually get. Hold back the tables that suit walk-ins best: twos and fours near the door or bar, rather than the large tables groups book. Release held tables to bookings later in the day if walk-ins are unlikely, such as on a wet evening.

Record walk-ins as you seat them, so you know over time how many each service brings. Without that, the number of tables to hold back is a guess.

Some venues accept more bookings than they have tables, relying on no-shows to make it work. It can fill the room on nights with predictable no-shows, and it creates double bookings when everyone arrives. If you overbook, do it only on nights where your own no-show rate is steady, by a small margin, with a plan for when everyone turns up. Our guide to double bookings covers the risks.

For most venues, reducing no-shows with reminders and easy cancellation is a safer way to use the capacity they have.

Capacity in covers is only part of the story; capacity in tables matters too. A room of 60 seats made mostly of fours cannot seat many parties of two without wasting seats, and a room of twos cannot seat a party of six without pushing tables together.

Look at your bookings by party size and compare them with your table mix. If most bookings are for two and most tables are for four, many covers are lost to empty seats. The right table mix, and the flexibility to join and split tables, can raise effective capacity without adding a single seat.

How many times a table can be sold in a service depends on how long each booking lasts. Set booking durations from your own data, by party size and service where you can, so the diary offers second sittings that will actually be free. Our guide to turn times explains how, and our guide to raising table turnover politely covers getting more from each table without rushing guests.

Capacity needs change through the year. The run-up to the end-of-year holidays, the first warm weekends, school holidays and local events all change demand, the mix of bookings and walk-ins, and how long guests stay. A terrace adds seats in summer and loses them in winter.

Review capacity at the start of each season. Set special limits for the busiest dates well in advance: fewer, longer sittings for festive menus, or more covers per half hour on a night with a set menu that is quick to serve.

To set capacity well, look at a few figures for each service over recent weeks:

If a service is full of bookings and turns away walk-ins every week, it could sell less in advance. If it has empty tables while the waitlist is used on other nights, its capacity may be set too low, or its booking times too narrow. If the kitchen struggles at the same half hour every night, the covers-per-half-hour limit is too high.

Every capacity decision trades one thing for another. Writing the trade-off down makes the decision clearer:

There is no single right answer. The right answer is the one that fits each service, decided on purpose and reviewed with the figures.

Large parties use capacity differently from twos and fours. A table of twelve takes several tables out of the diary, often for longer, and reaches the kitchen as a single large order. Two large parties at the same time can swamp a kitchen that would cope easily with the same number of covers on small tables.

Set a limit on large parties per service, or per half hour, as well as on covers. Many venues take large parties only at certain times, such as the start of the evening, when the kitchen can give them its full attention, and keep the busiest half hours for smaller tables.

Not every seat needs to be bookable. Bar stools, counter seats and a few terrace tables are often best kept for walk-ins, whatever the diary looks like. They suit guests who want a quick meal or a drink, they turn quickly, and they give the venue a way to say yes when the dining room is full.

Decide which seats are bookable and which are not, and keep that the same from service to service, so guests learn it. A venue known for keeping its bar for walk-ins gets more of them, because guests know it is worth trying.

Capacity is not only tables and the kitchen; it is also the floor team. A server can look after a certain number of tables well, and beyond that every table waits a little longer for everything. If two servers are on and each can look after twenty covers comfortably at once, forty covers at a time is the floor's real limit, whatever the room holds.

When staffing changes, capacity should change with it. A night with one server short is a night to sell fewer tables, or to limit arrivals more tightly, not a night to hope for the best. Set capacity with the staff plan in mind, and reduce it on the day if someone calls in sick.

The same kitchen can start different numbers of covers depending on what it is cooking. A set menu, prepared in advance and served together, lets a kitchen send far more covers in a half hour than a menu where every table orders something different. A tasting menu stretches each table's stay, reducing turns but making the kitchen's pace steadier.

When the menu changes, review capacity. A new menu with more dishes cooked to order may need a lower limit per half hour; a festive set menu may allow a higher one. Ask the head chef, who will know which dishes slow the pass on a busy night.

Capacity set weeks ahead sometimes has to change on the day. A storm closes the terrace, a chef is ill, a piece of kitchen equipment breaks. Decide in advance what you will do: which tables to close first, how to tell guests already booked, and whether to stop online booking for the evening.

Tell the waitlist and the walk-ins honestly. A guest told at the door that the kitchen is running a shorter menu tonight, or that tables are limited, usually understands. A guest who sits for an hour waiting for food from a kitchen that was never going to cope does not.

A full diary is not the goal; good evenings for guests are. A room booked to the last seat, with everyone arriving at eight, is a room where guests wait for drinks, for food and for the bill, and remember the waiting rather than the meal. A room booked slightly below its maximum, with arrivals spread out, is one where the team has time to look after every table.

That is why booking capacity is worth setting on purpose. The extra covers squeezed in on a busy night rarely make up for the guests who decide, after a slow evening, not to come back.

Guests see your booking capacity as the times the booking page offers them. If a time is full, it should not appear, and the nearest free times should. A guest who sees plenty of times on a busy night books one; a guest who sees none may join the waitlist, or go elsewhere.

Look at your booking page as a guest would, for your busiest service, a few days ahead. Are the times on offer the times you want to sell? Are large parties offered times the kitchen can handle? If the page offers half past seven to everyone and nothing at six, you have found where your capacity settings need work.

Some venues keep a few tables back from online booking for regulars, phone bookings and guests who need special arrangements, such as accessible seating or a large party. That is capacity planning too, and it works best when it is deliberate: a set number of tables per service, released to online booking at a set time if they are not needed.

Without a release time, held tables become empty tables. Decide when each held table goes back on sale, for example on the morning of the booking, and make that someone's job.

An invented bistro with 64 seats sells every table online for every service. On weekday lunches it is half empty while office workers who walk past find no table; on Saturday nights the kitchen is swamped at eight, when most bookings arrive.

It changes three things. Weekday lunches sell only half the room online and keep the rest for walk-ins, released at one o'clock if unused. Saturday dinner limits arrivals to 24 covers per half hour, spreading bookings from six to nine. And booking durations for large tables are lengthened to match how long they stay. Weekday lunch covers rise as walk-ins find tables; Saturday service runs calmly, with the same number of covers.

servearound gives you the settings booking capacity depends on. The booking rules set which times guests can book in each shift, the booking duration, the maximum party size online, the notice you need, and whether online bookings are confirmed at once or wait for your approval. Walk-ins are recorded alongside bookings, and the waitlist catches guests when a service is full. See the reservations module.

Analytics shows the figures to set capacity from: covers day by day, booked guests against walk-ins, no-shows, and for tables, utilisation, the median seating time, the gap between seatings and a heatmap of when the room fills. See Analytics.

How many covers you sell in advance in each service, and how many you accept in each part of it, set by both the tables you have and what the kitchen and floor can handle.

No. Lunches, weekday dinners, weekend dinners and Sunday lunches trade differently, and each needs its own limits.

As many as your records show walk-ins usually fill in that service, using the tables that suit them, and released later in the day if walk-ins look unlikely.

A cap on how many guests can arrive in each half hour, set from what the kitchen can start comfortably, so arrivals are spread across the evening.

Only in small amounts, on nights with a steady no-show rate, with a plan for when everyone arrives. Reducing no-shows is usually safer.

If tables do not match the party sizes that book, seats are wasted. The right mix and flexible tables raise effective capacity without more seats.

At the start of each season and whenever the figures show a service consistently turning guests away or leaving tables empty.

Covers by booking and walk-in, guests turned away or waitlisted, when the room filled, how long tables were occupied, and no-shows.

Not if everyone arrives at once or there is no room for walk-ins and late-running tables. A well-paced, nearly full diary usually serves guests and the kitchen better.

Often not. Keeping the bar and counter for walk-ins gives you a way to say yes when the dining room is full.

Yes. The number of servers on, and how many covers each can look after well, sets a limit alongside the tables and the kitchen.

Some venues hold a few for regulars, phone bookings and special needs. Decide how many, and release them to online booking at a set time if they are not needed.

Booking capacity is limited by tables and by the kitchen's pace, whichever runs out first. Set it separately for each service, decide what share of the room to sell in advance and what to hold back for walk-ins, and cap how many covers can arrive in each half hour so the kitchen is never swamped.

Match your table mix to the party sizes that book, set booking durations from your own data, overbook only knowingly if at all, and adjust capacity by season. Read your own figures, covers, walk-ins, waitlists, timings and no-shows, and write the trade-off down for each service, so the diary is as full as it should be, not as full as it can be.