How to cut no-shows at your restaurant

A no-show isn’t just a gap in the evening. It’s a table you turned other guests away for, food you prepped and a server standing idle. Most no-shows aren’t malicious: people forget, plans change, and cancelling feels like more effort than not turning up. So the fix is less about punishing guests and more about making the booking feel real — and cancelling feel easy.

Confirm every booking in writing

A booking that only lives in someone’s memory is easy to lose. When you confirm a booking in Tapp, the guest gets a confirmation by email and text message with the date, time and party size — so the plan sits in their inbox, not just their head. If you can’t take a booking, declining it sends a message too, so nobody turns up for a table that was never theirs.

Take the details that make a booking stick

• Ask for a phone number and an email with every booking, online or by phone
• Read the date, time and party size back when you take a booking by phone
• Put your cancellation policy in one short sentence where people book
• Tell guests how to reach you if their plans change

Mark no-shows, then measure them

When a guest doesn’t arrive, mark the booking as a no-show in Tapp instead of deleting it. Tapp’s analytics turn that into a no-show rate — the share of past bookings where the guest never came — shown next to your cancellation rate. A number you can watch beats a feeling that “Fridays are bad”.

Give the table a second life

Decide how long you hold a table for a late party — fifteen minutes is common — and tell your team, so nobody has to guess on a busy night. After that, the table goes to a walk-in. With the live floor in Tapp, the host sees at a glance which tables are free.