Restaurant no-shows are usually discussed as if they were the same problem as a missed dentist appointment. They are not, and the differences change what a good policy looks like.
A missed clinic appointment costs one slot. A missed table of eight on a Saturday costs eight covers on your best service, plus the food you prepped and the staff you rostered. It is also far more likely to be a group booking made by one person on behalf of seven others who never knew the policy existed.
The template
Adapt the bracketed parts. This is a general template, not legal advice, for private dining contracts or high-value events, have a solicitor look at it.
[Restaurant name]: Booking, Cancellation & No-Show Policy
We hold your table for the whole of your booking, so a table that goes unused is one we cannot offer to anyone else.
Notice. Please give at least [24 hours' / 48 hours'] notice to cancel or change your booking. You can do this by [phone / WhatsApp / the link in your confirmation].
Card details. For [parties of 6 or more / Friday and Saturday bookings / all bookings], we take card details to secure the table. Nothing is charged when you book.
Late cancellation and no-shows. If you cancel with less than [24 / 48] hours' notice, or do not arrive, we charge £[10–25] per person.
Running late. We hold your table for [15 minutes]. Please call us if you are delayed and we will do our best to keep it.
Large parties and set menus. Bookings of [8+] and all [tasting menu / private dining] bookings require [a deposit of £X per person / the full menu price], taken at the time of booking.
By booking with us you agree to this policy.
Short, specific, and (the part that makes it enforceable) shown before the booking is confirmed, not after.
Card hold beats deposit for most tables
This is the main way restaurants differ from clinics and salons.
A deposit takes money up front. It works for tasting menus, private dining and December, where you have bought food specifically and the booking is high value. It is friction on an ordinary Tuesday table for two, and friction costs you bookings.
A card hold takes the details and authorises a charge only if the table is missed. The customer pays nothing to book. You still have recourse. For most restaurants this is the right default, because it changes behaviour without suppressing demand.
The usual shape that results:
- Small weekday tables: no hold. Not worth the friction.
- Weekends, peak dates, parties of six or more: card hold.
- Tasting menu, chef's table, private dining, December: deposit or full prepayment.
Charge per cover, not per booking
A percentage of the bill is awkward because you do not know the bill yet. A flat fee per booking under-charges the table of eight, which is the one that actually hurts.
UK practice is typically £10 to £25 a head for an ordinary restaurant, and the full menu price where the food was bought for that booking. Per-cover is also the easiest version to defend, because it maps directly onto what you lost.
The confirmation window is where the money is
Here is the part that matters more than the fee.
The goal is not to collect no-show charges. It is to convert would-be no-shows into cancellations early enough to resell the table. A cancellation at 11am on Saturday is not a loss at all. It is an opening you can fill from the waitlist. A cancellation at 8:02pm is a loss with a fee attached.
That means the reminder timing does most of the work:
- Confirmation at the time of booking, stating the policy.
- A reminder the day before, with a one-tap way to cancel or change. Make cancelling easy: the alternative is not attendance, it is silence.
- A same-day confirmation for large parties and peak services.
Restaurants that do this properly find their no-show rate falls and their cancellation rate rises. That is the trade you want.
Then refill the table
A cancellation only pays if you sell the table again, and the window is short, often a few hours. Doing that by hand means someone ringing down a waitlist during service, which is exactly when nobody can.
This is the strongest argument for automating the loop rather than just writing the policy: the moment a table is released, the people who wanted it should hear about it. Not tomorrow, not when the manager gets a minute.
What the booking platforms let you enforce
If you take bookings through a platform, your policy has to fit what it supports. Check specifically:
- Does it support card holds, and on which services or party sizes?
- Can you set different rules by party size or day? A single global rule is usually too blunt.
- Does it send a cancellable reminder, or just a confirmation?
- Who handles the chargeback if a customer disputes the fee?
- What happens to bookings made by phone, do they carry the same policy, or does the whole thing only apply online?
That last one catches people out. If half your bookings come by phone and your policy only exists in the online flow, you are enforcing it on half your covers.
Where Remi fits
Remi answers the phone and WhatsApp, takes the booking with the policy attached, sends the day-before confirmation with an easy way to cancel, and (when a table does come free) offers it to the people on your waitlist while it can still be sold. £149 a month ex VAT with 1,000 talk-minutes included, then 15p a minute, 1-week free trial, no setup fee.
The point is not the fee. It is that the phone gets answered during service, the reminder always goes out, and the released table gets offered to someone while it is still worth something.
Related reading: the no-show policy template for UK clinics and salons, how to reduce no-shows without charging a fee, and what a telephone answering service costs in the UK.