Oak & Ash stopped holding tables for people who were never coming
Forty-four seats, two seatings a night, and an eighteen percent no-show rate that made the second one a gamble.
- 18% → 4%
- no-shows
- +11
- covers on an average Saturday
- 1 tap
- for a guest to confirm or cancel
- Reservations
- Tables
- Point of sale
- Reports
A booking widget that emailed a confirmation nobody read, and a paper book the bar could not see from the floor.
A reminder people actually answer
The reminder has two buttons — “I’ll be there” and “Cancel” — and neither asks for a password. That one decision is most of the improvement. Answering costs a tap, so people do it.
A cancellation frees the table right then, in time to sell it rather than in time to write it off.
No-shows that record themselves
Nobody remembers to mark a no-show at nine on a Saturday. They set the hold to twenty minutes past the booking, and anything still empty gets recorded on its own.
After that the guest history does the work: two no-shows against a name and it is flagged before the next booking is confirmed.
Deposits, only where they are warranted
Deposits start at parties of six. Below that, booking works exactly as it did.
Large-party no-shows have not happened since.
“A no-show at eight-thirty isn’t one empty table. It’s the second seating you turned away at six because the book said you were full.”
Run your next service on one system.
Build the whole thing on Build & Test for two months at no cost, with every feature unlocked. Move to a paid plan when you are ready to take money.