Should you use deposits?

The trade you are making

Asking for a card stops people booking casually. That is the whole mechanism — and it cuts both ways, because some of the people it stops would have turned up.

So the question is not “do deposits reduce no-shows”. They do. It is whether the bookings you lose are worth less than the empty tables you avoid. For a Tuesday lunch with a walk-in trade, usually not. For a table of twelve on New Year's Eve, obviously yes.

Where they earn their keep

• Large parties. One table of ten not arriving costs more than a whole quiet Tuesday.
• Peak sittings. Saturday 7pm, where the table would certainly have sold twice over.
• Special dates. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, New Year's Eve — the nights you buy stock for.
• Set menus and functions where you have already committed money before anyone walks in.

Notice that all four are rules you can write, which is exactly how deposits are set up here — you are not choosing between on and off for the whole venue.

Try this first

Before turning on deposits, mark your no-shows for a month. Your reports will give you an actual no-show rate instead of an impression, and it is often lower than it feels — one memorable Saturday can colour a whole quarter.

If the rate is genuinely a problem, deposits are the tool. If it is two percent, you may be about to solve a problem you do not have.