Turn times and pacing

The short version

Turn time is how long you expect a party to keep a table. Pacing is how many guests you are willing to have walk in at the same time. Between them they decide which times a guest is offered on your booking page.

Both live in one place: Settings → Capacity. If you have never set them, go there and use a starting point — it takes a minute and is far better than leaving them wrong.

Setting them up

The fastest way is to let us fill them in, then adjust once you have seen a few real services.

1. Open Settings and choose the Capacity tab.

2. At the top you will see Not sure what to put here? with three cards — Café / brunch, Casual dining and Fine dining. Each card shows the actual numbers it will apply, so you can see what you are agreeing to before you agree to it.

3. Pick the closest match and press Use these, then Apply to confirm. This replaces your current turn times and pacing and sets the gap between seatings. Bookings you already have are not touched.

4. Scroll down and check the three sections it filled in — Turn times, Gap between seatings and Pacing. Change anything that does not match your room, then press Save turn times, Save gap or Save pacing in that section.

What each setting is asking for

Turn times are set by party size, because a two-top and a table of eight are not the same job. Each row reads Parties of 1 – 2 stay 90 min. Add rows with + Add rule if you want more bands.

Gap between seatings is the time you hold a table after a party leaves — clearing, wiping down, resetting. With a 10-minute gap, a table free at 8:15 PM can next be booked from 8:30 PM. Zero means back-to-back.

Pacing caps arrivals in any 15 minutes. max covers counts guests; max reservations counts bookings, whatever their size. Leave a box empty for no cap of that kind. A rule can apply to All shifts or to one shift by name, and where two rules overlap the stricter one wins.

A worked example

Say you took the Casual dining starting point. That gives you parties of 1–2 staying 90 minutes, 3–4 staying 105, larger tables 120, a 10-minute gap, and a cap of 16 guests per 15 minutes.

A table of four books 6:30 PM. Here is what your settings just decided:

• They are a party of four, so the 105-minute rule applies — that table is busy until 8:15 PM.
• Add the 10-minute gap and it is free at 8:25 PM. Bookings sit on quarter hours, so the next time offered on that table is 8:30 PM.

Now pacing. Suppose 7:00 PM already has a six and a four booked — ten guests arriving in that quarter hour, against your cap of 16.

• A party of four asking for 7:00 PM would make fourteen. Under the cap, so they see 7:00 PM offered.
• A party of eight would make eighteen. Over the cap, so 7:00 PM simply is not shown to them — they are offered 7:15 PM or 7:30 PM instead.

The cap is checked against the party asking, which is why two guests looking at the same evening can be shown different times. Nobody is ever turned away after booking: if a time appears, it is yours.

The two ways to get it wrong

Both are common, and they look nothing like each other from where you are standing.

Turn times too short. The next booking lands on a table that is still eating. You will see this at the door — parties arriving with a reservation and nowhere to sit. It is unpleasant, but at least it tells you.

Pacing has the same shape. Caps that are too tight quietly stop offering times you could have filled; too loose and everyone arrives at once, which your kitchen will tell you about soon enough.

Tuning them later

Set these to what actually happens, not what you would like to happen — then come back after a fortnight of real services. The Reports tab shows your average turn, which is the number to compare against what you typed.

If a particular date needs different limits — a public holiday, a function — do not change your standing rules for it. Set that day's caps on the Hours tab as a special day, and it will ignore your normal pacing on that date only.