Restaurant Table Booking: Count Tables by Class, Not by Name

A grilled-fish place by the road, 14 tables. On Wednesday someone messages to book for 6 on Saturday night. The person at the counter writes it in the book: "Sat 8pm, 6 pax, table 9". On Thursday another caller wants 4 people at 7pm on the same Saturday. She checks the book, sees table 9 taken at 8, and writes table 9 for 7pm too — thinking an hour is enough. On Saturday the 7pm party stays until 8.45. The party of 6 arrives, their table has people at it, and nobody wants to be the one to tell them.

A brunch café, 9 tables, all twos except two long ones. Every weekend brings 20 enquiries in Instagram DMs. The owner answers them one at a time while pulling coffee. She cannot answer "anything free at 11?" without opening the book, counting in her head, and hoping she has not missed a booking a colleague already wrote down.

A family restaurant in a small town with a VIP room that seats 10. Most Friday nights a couple ends up in it, because when they arrived that was what was free. Later a large group calls, and the room that exists for them is taken by two people.

Why this keeps happening

The most basic reason: a reservation book stores a table's name, not a table's duration. When you write "table 9, 8pm", the book does not know how long the 7pm party will sit. A person has to know that. And the person carrying a tray does not have time to work it out.

Second: a table is not a time slot, it is an overlapping stretch of time. A salon sells a 45-minute slot with a clear start and end. A restaurant sells a table for a length of time that depends on party size — two people might be an hour, eight people might be two. Two bookings at "7" and "8" may or may not collide, depending entirely on how many people are in each.

Third, and this one is rarely noticed: promising a specific table in advance actually costs you money. When you commit "table 9" three days ahead, you lock one physical table to one party. On the night, table 7 may be free and table 11 may have just turned — but the book says table 9 belongs to them. You give away flexibility you genuinely have, and you give it away before the night has even started.

Fourth: big tables get eaten by small parties. With no rule in place, the couple who walks in first gets the six-top, because that is what is free in front of you. When the party of six calls that afternoon, the answer is "full" — when what is actually full is one table, taken by the wrong people.

Fifth: walk-ins are invisible to the count. A reservation book only knows about reservations. Parties who come straight through the door are written nowhere, so the number of free tables the system — or your head — believes in is always higher than the truth.

What owners try instead

The usual answer is the book at the counter, one page per day. Fast, cheap, and everybody understands it. But it exists in one place, and only the person standing in front of it can answer a question. On a busy night the book becomes the argument rather than the answer.

Some move up to a Google Sheet with a column per hour. This is better — it opens on a phone, and two people can look at once. The trouble is that a cell does not know about duration: you still have to remember yourself that the party of eight at 7 is not done by 8.

Some use a staff WhatsApp group as the book. Every booking is in there, mixed in with everything else, and nobody can answer "how many tables are free at 8" without scrolling.

And some stop taking bookings altogether — walk-ins only. That is a perfectly reasonable decision, and plenty of restaurants thrive on it. But it means your weekend depends entirely on who happens to pass by, and the large group planning a celebration will go somewhere that can give them certainty.

The right way to run table bookings

The first principle changes everything else: do not book a specific table. Count how many of each kind you have.

In TempahKu you list your tables by class rather than one by one. For example: "Table for 2" — 6 tables. "Table for 4" — 5 tables. "Long table for 8" — 2 tables. Each class carries a minimum and maximum party size. When a diner books, the system does not hand them a table number; it simply checks whether a class that fits them still has a table free for that stretch of time.

This is the part that matters: the physical table is chosen when the party arrives, not when they book. On the night you seat them at whichever suitable table is free. You get back the flexibility the reservation book took from you, and the diner still gets the certainty they wanted — there will be a table for them at that time.

Second principle: turn time follows party size. You set it yourself. Out of the box it is 60 minutes for parties of 2 or fewer, 90 minutes for 3–4, and 120 minutes for anything larger — change it to match your restaurant. That stretch is counted as half-open: a party seated at 6.00 for 90 minutes and a party seated at 7.30 do not overlap. The final minute belongs to nobody, so you do not lose a turn every night to arithmetic that is too cautious.

Third principle: small parties do not eat large tables. The engine tries the smallest fitting class first. A couple fills a two-top while two-tops exist, and the eight-top stays available for a party that needs it.

For the diner, all of this collapses into three questions: how many people, which date, what time. They never see the words "table class" and never need to understand your floor. The times they are shown are only the times a table genuinely exists for a party that size.

Four settings that protect your night

An arrivals cap per slot. You may have 8 tables free at 8pm, but your kitchen cannot start 8 tables at once. This limits how many people may start in each time slot — it paces arrivals, not how many people are in the room. It is off by default; switch it on when the kitchen, not the floor, is your constraint.

Last seating before closing. 60 minutes by default. There is no point accepting a 9.45 booking when you close at 10.

A maximum party size online. 8 by default. Anything larger is not given an automatic slot — the booking page shows a button to contact you directly instead. This is a decision, not a shortcoming: big groups usually need tables moved together, a set menu, or a room to themselves, and that is a human conversation. The system deliberately does not combine tables automatically — if it did, it would count the same physical tables twice and your night would get worse, not better.

A per-person deposit. You can set a deposit per head (say RM10 each) and choose the party size at which it starts applying — so small parties book with no deposit and only large ones have to commit. Diners pay through your own DuitNow QR and upload the proof. The money goes straight to your account; TempahKu never touches it and takes no commission per booking.

The night itself: the Floor

This is where table names come back — in the right place. Name every table the way you actually call it: A1, A2, Window 3, VIP Room. You can lay those tables out on a grid that matches the shape of the real room, tapping or dragging, any size or shape.

When a party arrives: tap the party, tap the table. A table another party is holding at that moment cannot be picked — the system tells you who has it rather than just refusing. The bookings list shows each party's table, so whoever is holding the phone that night knows the state of the floor, not only the person writing in the book.

Two small things help a lot on a busy night. First, walk-ins are recorded through the same engine, in seconds from the dashboard — so a party who came through the door genuinely reduces the count instead of vanishing from it. Second, marking a party as a no-show releases their table again. A booking that never turned up stops haunting the rest of your evening.

When this helps most

Most obviously when you have a mix of table sizes and full weekends. That is where classes pay for themselves: large tables stay available for large parties without anyone having to remember the rule.

It also helps a great deal when more than one person answers bookings. A reservation book is only trustworthy while exactly one person writes in it.

It matters less if you are a small place that is almost entirely walk-in and rarely takes bookings. In that case take only the useful part — record walk-ins so you know which nights are genuinely busy — and leave the rest.

In summary

Table booking does not go wrong because the reservation book is untidy. It goes wrong because the book stores the wrong thing: a table's name instead of a table's duration. Once you stop promising a specific table three days ahead, and start counting how many tables of each size you have free across each stretch of time, two parties can no longer land on one table — and you are free to seat anyone anywhere on the night.

Restaurant mode is switched on by TempahKu rather than being a toggle you flip at signup. We help set up your first table classes and turn times, because getting those wrong on opening night costs more than a few minutes with us. Start a free 14-day account first, then tell us — ask Nana using the chat button in the corner of the page, or email hello@tempahku.com.

Also worth reading: the booking system for restaurants & cafés (in Malay) and how the accommodation engine counts nights.