PUB BOOKING SYSTEM · TABLE BOOKING SOFTWARE

A pub booking system that fills the diary without wrecking service.

Most table booking software will happily sell you eight covers at eight o’clock. Hendra One knows your table combinations, your turn times and how fast your kitchen can actually take arrivals, so the diary fills itself in an order the section can serve.

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No per-cover booking fees. Ever.
THE DIARY

It allocates the way a good host would.

Describe the room once: tables, which ones join together and for how many, turn times per sitting, how many arrivals you can absorb in fifteen minutes. From then on the booking system works inside those rules instead of against them.

Table combinations

Two fours make a party of eight, a six and a two make eight the other way. The system holds every valid combination and picks the one that costs you the least flexibility.

Arrival pacing per day

Cap how many covers can land in any fifteen-minute window. Sunday lunch and a wet Tuesday do not need the same ceiling.

Turn times that vary by sitting

Ninety minutes for an early table, the rest of the evening for the last one. Set it per sitting rather than one blunt number for the whole week.

Last-booking times and slot blocks

Stop online bookings before the kitchen closes, and block out slots the floor team needs kept clear without hiding the whole service.

Walk-ins on the same grid

Walk-ins go straight on the diary and count towards pacing, so the picture on screen is the picture in the room.

Override when you need to

A manager with the right permission can book past pacing or past a full sitting. It is a deliberate act by a named person, not a loophole.
THE GUEST SIDE

A branded booking widget your guests can actually use.

Party size, then date, then sitting, then time, with sold-out days greyed out before anyone picks them. It sits on your own site under your own branding, or on your own domain.

Sold-out days shown up front

Guests see what is gone before they invest three clicks in it, which is the single biggest cause of abandoned bookings.

Guests can choose where they sit

Where you allow it, a guest picks the area or table type rather than taking pot luck.

Occasions captured at booking

Birthdays, anniversaries and your own configurable occasions land on the diary, so the floor team sees them coming.

Special events with their own rules

One-off dated sittings with their own name, price and rules: Christmas Day, a tasting menu, New Year’s Eve.

Waitlist that does the chasing

When a table frees up, the guests waiting get an email automatically. No callback list behind the bar.

Group pre-orders

Send a party a link and every guest picks their own courses. Orders lock automatically and print as party sheets and kitchen tallies, with all 14 UK allergens tagged per dish.
MONEY AND NO-SHOWS

Deposits and card details, without a separate payments vendor.

No-shows are the tax on being easy to book. The tools to stop them are part of the booking system rather than a bolt-on that bills separately.

Deposits per cover

Charge a deposit by the head, with a pay-link sent to the guest and the payment reconciled against the booking.

Automatic deposit rules

Request a deposit only where it matters: parties over a size, particular days, particular events. Unpaid requests auto-release on an hourly sweep so the table is not held hostage.

Card on file for no-show fees

Card details are vaulted with Stripe with postcode verification. The token never sits anywhere a member of staff can read it.

Policy-driven refunds

Your cancellation policy decides what comes back and when, so nobody is arguing about it at the pass on a Saturday.

Paid extras and upsells

Birthday packages, flowers, a bottle on the table. Guests pay online by card, VAT is handled, and a cancellation refunds in one click.

One reconciliation view

Deposits, upsells and refunds land in a ledger that reconciles against Stripe, rather than in three places that never quite agree.

What to look for in a pub booking system

Most table booking software was built for restaurants with a fixed cover count and a maître d’ managing the door. A pub is a harder problem: the same room does drinkers and diners, the tables move, Sunday is four times Tuesday, and the person accepting the booking is often also pulling a pint. A booking system for a pub has to be safe when nobody is watching it.

That comes down to three things. First, the system needs a real model of the room, not a slot count: table combinations, minimum and maximum covers per table, and which areas can be used for what. Second, it needs pacing, because the failure mode in a pub is not an overbooked room but twenty-two covers arriving in the same ten minutes. Third, the pricing has to be flat. Per-cover fees punish exactly the growth you are trying to create, and on a busy December they are the largest software bill a pub pays.

Hendra One does all three, and the booking system shares its guest database with the guest CRM and marketing, its team with the rota, and its site settings with compliance. One login, one guest record, one flat price.

BEFORE YOU MOVE SYSTEMS

Pub booking system questions.

Does the pub booking system charge per cover?

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No. There are no per-cover or per-booking fees, for you or for your guests. The whole system is £100 per site per month excluding VAT, which is the main reason operators move over from booking platforms that bill by the head.

Can it handle table combinations and turn times?

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Yes. You describe your tables once, including which ones join together and for how many, and set turn times and arrival pacing per day. The diary then allocates within those rules, so an online booking cannot take a table your kitchen cannot serve.

Can we take deposits or card details to stop no-shows?

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Yes. Deposits can be per cover, requested automatically by rules such as party size or day of the week, with a policy-driven refund on cancellation. You can also hold a card on file for a no-show fee, vaulted with Stripe rather than stored by us.

Will it work alongside our existing booking system while we move?

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Yes. We import your future bookings and your guest database with consent status intact, and the widget can run alongside your old system until you are ready to switch it off. Most venues complete the move in under two weeks.

Can guests amend or cancel without phoning us?

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Yes. Every confirmation carries a self-service link to amend or cancel, plus an add-to-calendar link, and automatic pre-arrival reminders go out without anyone touching them.

See it running on your own menus and your own tables.

A 30-minute walkthrough with someone who has run a service, not a sales deck.

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