Reservations & waitlist
Take bookings for later, keep a queue of walk-ins waiting now, and seat either one straight onto a table with a dine-in ticket already open. It all lives on the Reservations screen.
What it does
Reservations gives your front of house two queues that end in the same place — a party sitting at a table. Booked guests go on the reservations list for a date and time; walk-ins with no booking go on the waitlist. When a table’s ready, you seat either one and the app opens their dine-in ticket for you.
- Reservations — parties booked for a specific day and time, added by you or by guests online.
- Waitlist — walk-ins queued right now, with a live position in line.
- Settings — turn on online booking, set your booking rules, and manage blocked contacts.
Add a reservation
On the Reservations tab, use the date picker (or the arrows either side of it) to move to the day you want, then press New reservation.
- Enter the guest’s name, and their phone number if you have it.
- Set the party size, and pick the date, time, and how long you expect them to stay.
- Optionally assign a table now, or leave it unassigned and choose when you seat them.
- Add any special requests — a birthday, a highchair, a window seat — then save.
Online bookings from your public page
Turn on Online booking in Settings and guests can request a table themselves from your public booking page. Copy the booking link there to share it on your menu, social profiles, or a QR sticker. In Settings you also set the rules the form obeys — max party size, how far ahead people can book, how much notice you need, and your default sitting length.
- You approve each one — online requests arrive as Pending. Open the booking and choose Confirm to accept it, or cancel it if you can’t fit them.
- Or confirm automatically — switch on auto-confirm and online bookings land already confirmed, no approval step.
- Spotting them is easy — bookings made online are marked so you can tell them apart from the ones you added.
The walk-in waitlist
On the Waitlist tab, add a walk-in with their name, party size, phone, and a rough wait time. Each party gets a position in the queue, and you can share a status link so guests can watch their place in line from their own phone — no app or account needed.
- Add the party as they arrive — they join the bottom of the queue.
- When their table’s nearly ready, press Notify to mark that you’ve called them.
- When a table frees up, seat them (see below).
Seating a booking or walk-in
Seating is the moment a party sits down. Press Seat on a reservation or a waitlist entry and FoodFlow opens a dine-in ticket on their table automatically — so it appears on your floor view and is ready for orders at the POS with no extra setup. For a walk-in you pick which table they’re going to as you seat them.
No-shows, cancellations & statuses
Each booking carries a status so everyone knows where it stands. From a booking’s menu you can confirm it, mark it seated, complete it once they’ve left, or mark it cancelled or a no-show if they don’t turn up. Cancelled and no-show bookings stay on the day, greyed out, so your history stays honest.
- Pending — an online request waiting for you to approve.
- Confirmed — accepted and expected.
- Seated — the party has sat down and their ticket is open.
- Completed — they’ve finished and left.
- Cancelled / No-show — called off, or never arrived.