Playbook, restaurant
Set menus, minimum spends and the table of twelve
Somewhere above eight or ten people a restaurant stops taking a booking and starts negotiating an event. A set menu becomes compulsory, a deposit appears, pre-orders are due by a date, and one large table can block a section for a whole evening. Almost all of that is written down already, and almost none of it is on the website where the enquirer is looking.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for group bookings holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The threshold is the whole answer: below it nothing changes, above it four separate rules switch on at once, and the enquirer does not know which side of it they are on.
- Unlike a hotel group enquiry there is no room block and no contract, but there is a compulsory menu and a per head pre-order deadline that a party of twelve will miss unless somebody tells them early.
- The commercial risk runs the other way from an ordinary booking: the restaurant is often choosing between two enquiries for the same Saturday, so a slow reply loses the better one.
- Every one of these questions is answerable from a document except the only one that matters to the guest, which is whether the date is free.
How it arrives
- do you take bookings for 12 people
- do we have to have the set menu for a large group
- is there a minimum spend on a saturday
- when do you need our food choices by
- can we have a private room for a birthday
- can we bring our own cake and is there a charge
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The party size at which your rules change | One number, stated plainly, and what switches on when it is crossed. Set menu required, deposit taken, pre-orders due, service charge added automatically. Enquirers ask about six of these one at a time, and a single threshold document answers all six in one reply. |
|---|---|
| Group menus with prices and the choice inside them | The two or three course options, the per head price, whether one menu has to be chosen for the whole table or each guest picks, and how dietary requirements are handled within it. Include whether drinks are separate, because a minimum spend argument almost always starts there. |
| Deposit, pre-order and reduced numbers terms | The deposit per head, the pre-order deadline in days before, the notice for reducing the party, and what happens to the deposit if four people do not turn up. Write the reduced numbers position down, because it is the term most often applied on the night and least often published. |
| Private hire and exclusive use terms | Whether a separate room exists, its capacity seated and standing, the minimum spend to hold it, and whether exclusive use of the whole room is possible and on which nights. Christmas and celebration menus belong here too, because those enquiries arrive months ahead. |
The reply
For twelve people the group menu applies, which is two courses or three at the published per head price, and we ask for choices by the published deadline so the kitchen can order. There is a deposit per head to hold the table, and the party can be reduced up to the published notice without losing it. I cannot see the diary to check Saturday the fourteenth, so leave your name, email and the date and the team will confirm availability today.
It front loads the four things that change above the threshold, in the order the guest will need them, so the reply answers questions they had not asked yet. Then it says plainly that the date cannot be checked here and converts the enquiry into something the restaurant can act on, with the date already captured.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any enquiry that names a date and a party size, or asks about a private room, exclusive use or a Christmas booking, all of which are commercial conversations rather than lookups.
I cannot check whether that date is free, because I have no access to the diary. Leave your name, email, the date, the number of guests and anything you already know about timings, and the person who runs the bookings will come back to you. In the meantime I can tell you about the group menus, the deposit and the pre-order deadline.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- That a large table is available on a date, or that a private room is free.
- That the set menu can be waived, or that the minimum spend can be negotiated down.
- A per head price for a bespoke menu that has not been costed by the kitchen.
- That dietary requirements within a group menu are already covered, when that is a conversation with the kitchen.
Questions
- Most group enquiries end in a phone call anyway. What is the gain?
- The call gets shorter and it starts further along. A caller who already knows the threshold, the menu, the deposit and the pre-order deadline is ringing to agree a date, not to be walked through the terms during a service. That is the difference between a two minute call and a ten minute one.
- Can it hold a provisional booking?
- No. It does not write into a diary or a booking system of any kind. It collects a name, an email and a message, which is emailed to whoever you nominate and stored so the enquiry survives even if that email fails to arrive.
- What should we index first for this?
- The threshold document. One page saying what changes above your large party size answers most of the traffic, and it is usually the only piece of this that has never been written down anywhere a guest can reach.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling group bookings in generalNearly always a handover, and an expensive one to fumble. Collect the date, the numbers and the requirements before it reaches a person.
- The per head charge nobody read before they bookedA card held against a table and a charge per empty seat only hold up if the guest was told first. That telling is the work.
- The handover a restaurant cannot do by emailA callback form suits a private hire enquiry. For an allergy before tonight's service it does not, and the wording must lead with the phone.
- The car park closes before the second sitting doesThe multi storey locks before the late sitting finishes, the bay outside is a loading bay, and the evening tariff starts on the hour.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.