Isaac Lacosta
In this article+
«We adjust some things ourselves, but we no longer worry about tables overlapping or more people turning up than we can fit. And there are fewer no-shows.»
The Boga Gastrotaberna team · Boga Gastrotaberna, Girona
- Channels in a single floor diary
- Google, website and phone
- The restaurant’s setup in Menuveo.
- Reminder before every booking
- The restaurant’s setup in Menuveo.
- Capacity control
- By area and by sitting
- The restaurant’s setup in Menuveo.
In 30 seconds
- 01A tricky floor (tables of every size, bar, mezzanine, capacity by sitting) kept in a notebook.
- 02Booking system set up from scratch, with the rules of their floor.
- 03The team opens the diary and the service is already sorted.
A floor that does not fit in a notebook
The kitchen was the easy part.
Boga has good produce, sharing plates and a bar where you eat just as well as at a table; the floor is the complicated part.
There are tables for two, four and six. The bar counts towards capacity but is not booked in the same way. The mezzanine only opens if there is enough volume to send someone up to serve it. And a Saturday night cannot take the same as a Tuesday lunchtime.
All of that lived in a notebook, with bookings coming in from three places. The result: couples at tables for six, groups that had to be turned away, double bookings and tables waiting for people who never turned up.
What we did: the whole system, with the rules of their floor
We started by drawing the floor as it really is.
Each table with its size and its area; the bar, the dining room and the mezzanine as separate areas, each with its own capacity and the mezzanine with its own rule.
Then the service rules: which tables combine, how long a table for two lasts and how long a group of eight, and how many diners each sitting takes. A group of six stops being a problem because the system knows which two tables to join and at what time.
They adjust the day-to-day from the floor diary. What they no longer have to watch is the underlying part: that two bookings never land on the same table and that a sitting never takes more people than fit.
How Menuveo does it
Menuveo sets up your floor diary with you: capacities, table combinations and reminders, so bookings do not overlap and no sitting is oversold.
Swipe to compare →
| Week | Action | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Real floor plan and capacity by area and sitting | Floor diary |
| 2 | Table combinations and durations by group size | Floor diary |
| 2 | Google and website bookings into the same diary | Google, website and phone |
| 3 | WhatsApp reminders before every booking | |
| 3 onwards | Seasonal rule adjustments | Floor diary |
What changed: service starts already sorted
You notice the difference in the half hour before opening.
It used to be spent going over the notebook and deciding by hand who sits where; now the allocation is already done.
The floor is used better without squeezing anyone: small tables fill with small parties and groups go where they fit. The mezzanine opens when it makes sense, not just in case.
Nothing has changed in the kitchen. The complicated part, which was the floor, no longer depends on going through a notebook; and with the WhatsApp reminder, fewer tables sit waiting for someone who does not come.
Before
- Bookings in a notebook, on a mobile phone and on Instagram.
- Nobody knew the real capacity of a sitting until the room was full.
- Couples at tables for six and groups of six who had to be turned away.
- Double bookings and tables waiting for people who did not show up.
After
- A single diary with Google, the website and the phone in it.
- Capacity by area and by sitting, with the mezzanine open only when needed.
- Tables that combine according to the size of the group.
- WhatsApp reminder before every booking.
What Boga Gastrotaberna uses
We set up the whole system with them: a single floor diary, capacity by area and by sitting, table combinations, durations according to the group and WhatsApp reminders.