Question 1

What does 86'd mean in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

To 86 something is to declare it unavailable: "86 the halibut" means the kitchen is out and servers must stop selling it. The origin is disputed (soda-fountain codes and Prohibition stories both circulate) but the usage is universal American kitchen and floor slang. The 86 list lives where every server sees it (the pass, the POS, a whiteboard) and keeping it current is basic service hygiene, because a table sold a dish that comes back 86'd starts its night with an apology. By extension a disruptive guest can be 86'd from the building. At the host stand the concept extends to tables and slots: a broken booth or a buyout section is 86'd from tonight's floor plan.

Question 2

What is book and release?

Accepted Answer

Book and release is holding tables back from the online book and releasing them closer to the night. A room might publish 80% of its prime-time slots weeks out and release the rest 24 to 48 hours ahead, keeping room for regulars, walk-ins and the chef's guests, or protecting the floor from a fully pre-committed Saturday. Some rooms release in waves (a month out, a week out, day-of) which is also why hot restaurants "suddenly" show availability. Used honestly it is smart yield management; used clumsily it teaches guests the book is fake. The release schedule should be a deliberate decision, not whatever the software defaulted to.

Question 3

What is a restaurant buyout?

Accepted Answer

A buyout is booking the entire restaurant (or a defined private room) for one party: a company dinner, a wedding party, a film crew. The restaurant closes to the public and charges either a room fee plus menu, or a minimum spend that guarantees the night's revenue. Buyouts are contracts more than reservations: deposit (often substantial and partly non-refundable), set menu, headcount deadline, start and end times, and service charge all agreed in writing. They are lucrative because revenue is guaranteed, and risky because a cancelled buyout is a fully dark room, which is why deposits and cancellation terms are firmest here of anywhere in the book.

Question 4

What is camping at a restaurant table?

Accepted Answer

Camping is when a party stays long after the meal is done, occupying a table the restaurant needs to turn: the two-hour coffee after a 45-minute lunch. Campers are a revenue problem in rooms that plan on multiple turns, because the next reservation is now standing at the host stand. Polite counters include pacing the check drop, moving lingerers to the bar for a nightcap, stating time limits on prime-time bookings ("we may need this table at 8:45"), and building realistic turn times into the book instead of hoping. The term is front-of-house slang and stays behind the stand; no guest should ever hear themselves called a camper.

Question 5

What is a cancellation window?

Accepted Answer

The cancellation window is the period before a reservation during which cancelling is free. Outside the window (say, more than 4 hours ahead), the guest cancels without charge; inside it, a late-cancellation fee may apply, because the restaurant can no longer realistically re-sell the table. Typical windows run 2 to 4 hours for casual rooms with walk-in traffic and 24 to 48 hours for tasting menus and large formats. A good policy pairs the window with a self-serve cancel link, since guests who can cancel in one tap cancel earlier, and an early cancellation is a table saved rather than a fee collected.

Question 6

What is a cover in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

A cover is one seated guest. A four-top that shows up as a full party counts as four covers; a solo diner at the bar is one. Covers are the restaurant's base unit of volume: kitchens prep by expected covers, hosts pace seating by covers per slot, and reports total covers per service. The word matters commercially too, because some reservation platforms bill per cover: OpenTable's network fee is $1.00 to $1.50 per seated network cover at list price, so a busy Saturday literally has a per-guest software cost. When someone asks "how many covers did we do?", they mean how many guests were actually fed, not how many reservations were booked.

Question 7

What is a cover count?

Accepted Answer

The cover count is the total number of guests seated in a given period: a slot, a service, a night, a week. Hosts use the per-slot cover count to pace the kitchen ("we're holding 7:00 PM to 40 covers"), managers use the nightly count to judge the shift, and owners watch weekly counts for trend. It differs from the reservation count: 20 bookings might be 65 covers. Cover count is also the number that turns a no-show policy into money: multiply lost covers by your average check and you have the real cost of empty seats, which is exactly what a no-show cost calculator does.

Question 8

What is a credit card hold for a reservation?

Accepted Answer

A card hold secures a reservation with a payment card without charging anything upfront. The card details are saved (by the payment processor, never on paper) and the restaurant may charge the published fee only if the party no-shows or cancels inside the window. It is the lowest-friction form of no-show protection: the 95% of guests who show up never feel it, unlike a deposit which takes real money at booking. Every major platform supports holds; the differences are cost and cut. Disclosure is the legal and practical key: the fee amount and conditions must be stated at booking.

Question 9

What is a reservation deposit?

Accepted Answer

A reservation deposit is money charged at booking and applied to the final bill when the party dines. Unlike a card hold, the guest pays upfront, which makes deposits the tool for high-stakes bookings: tasting menus, large parties, holidays, buyouts. Operators report per-head deposits from $10 in casual rooms to $25-50 for fine dining, and note that even tiny deposits deter no-shows because commitment does the work. Good deposit hygiene: auto-apply to the bill, refund outside the cancellation window, transfer when guests reschedule. Platform economics matter here: Tock takes 2-3% of prepaid volume and OpenTable applies a 2% service fee to deposits.

Question 10

What is a deuce in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

A deuce is a table for two, or the two-person party sitting at it. Deuces are the workhorses of most dining rooms: they are the most common party size, they turn fastest, and a floor's supply of them decides how many couples you can seat at prime time. Hosts protect deuces the way they protect four-tops: seating a solo guest at a deuce is fine, but splitting a party of four across two deuces that could have been pushed together wastes the mix. Rooms with flexible furniture combine deuces into four- and six-tops on the fly, which is why seating charts mark which tables join.

Question 11

What is a four-top?

Accepted Answer

A four-top is a table that seats four; the pattern extends to two-top, six-top, eight-top. The "top" counts seats, not guests: a couple seated at a four-top is two covers occupying a four-top, which is exactly the inefficiency hosts fight all night. Table mix (how many deuces, four-tops and big tables the floor holds) determines which reservations fit where, and smart seating matches party size to the tightest table that fits, keeping four-tops free for actual fours. When hosts and reservation systems assign tables, they are solving this puzzle: every four-top burned on a deuce at 7 PM is two covers you could not seat at 7:15.

Question 12

What is a restaurant guest book or CRM?

Accepted Answer

The guest book is the restaurant's record of who its guests are: names, contact details, visit history, seating preferences, allergies, big-night notes, no-show history. On paper it was literally a book; in software it is a lightweight CRM keyed to reservations. It is also the asset platform contracts fight over. OpenTable's agreement distinguishes the restaurant's "Client Data" from "Online Reservation Data" it makes available, with export ending 30 days after termination, while SevenRooms and others pledge full ownership. The practical test of any system: can you export the complete guest book to CSV, free, today, and after you cancel?

Question 13

What counts as a large party in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

A large party is any booking above the threshold where your normal floor plan and policies stop working, most rooms draw the line at 6 or 8 guests. Large parties get special handling because the downside is bigger: a no-show eight-top wrecks a Saturday plot, kitchens need pacing for one big fire, and tables must be physically joined. Standard practice: card on file or per-head deposit above the threshold, a tighter cancellation window, disclosed auto-gratuity where used, and phone-first booking above roughly ten covers so a human plans the details. Online booking pages typically cap party size and route bigger groups to the phone.

Question 14

What does last seating mean?

Accepted Answer

Last seating is the latest time a party can be seated, not the time the restaurant closes. A room with a 10 PM last seating serves that table a full meal and might not lock the door until midnight. Publishing it precisely matters in both directions: booking slots must stop at last seating (a 10:15 online slot after a 10:00 last seating is a broken configuration), and guests arriving at 9:55 are owed the same unhurried service as the 7 o'clocks. Kitchens staff and prep to it, and "kitchen closes" usually trails it by the length of one full order. In reservation systems the service period's end time should be defined as the last seating.

Question 15

What is a no-show in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

A no-show is a party that booked a table and never arrived, without cancelling. It is the most expensive failure in the reservation system: the table was held, walk-ins were turned away, and the kitchen prepped for guests who never came. Standard practice is a grace period (15 to 20 minutes), a phone call to the number on the booking, and only then marking the reservation a no-show. The two proven counters are day-before reminders and a card on file with a published fee; operators report the combination takes no-shows from a weekly headache to nearly zero. Distinct from a late cancellation, where the guest at least told you the table was free.

Question 16

What is a no-show fee?

Accepted Answer

A no-show fee is a per-guest charge applied to the card on file when a party misses its reservation without notice. Operators report typical amounts of $10 to $25 per head in casual rooms and $50 or more in fine dining. The fee only works when three conditions hold: it was disclosed at booking, a card actually secures the reservation, and callers are waived. Watch who takes a cut: OpenTable applies a 2% service fee to no-show charges since 2026, and resOS adds 2% plus Stripe fees; on TableHelm the charge runs on the restaurant's own Stripe account with zero platform take.

Question 17

What does on a wait mean in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

A restaurant is "on a wait" when no tables are immediately available and arriving parties are being quoted a wait time and added to the list. It is a state, not a place: the host stand flips from "right this way" to quoting twenty minutes, managing the queue, and matching freed tables to waiting parties by size and order. Calling the wait accurately is a skill built on knowing turn times: three deuces about to drop checks means a 10-minute quote for couples and a 45-minute quote for a six-top. Going on a wait early, before the room is actually full, is how experienced hosts keep the door from outrunning the floor.

Question 18

What is pacing in restaurant reservations?

Accepted Answer

Pacing is controlling how many guests land in each booking slot so the kitchen and floor are never hit by a wave they cannot serve. A room that can physically seat 120 might pace online bookings to 30 covers per 15-minute slot, spreading the night instead of stacking it at 7:30. Reservation systems implement pacing as a cap per slot (by covers or by parties); hosts implement it by offering 7:15 when 7:00 is stacked. Pacing complaints are real product differentiators: one documented Resy review asks for finer control than cover-count-only pacing. Good pacing is invisible to guests and is the difference between a full book and a smooth one.

Question 19

What is a POS in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

The POS (point of sale) is the system that takes orders and payments: the terminals servers ring items into, the kitchen tickets, the end-of-night Z report. Toast, Square and Lightspeed are common examples. Reservation systems and POS live next to each other, and integrations pass useful data between them, like matching a check to a guest profile for spend history. Integration is genuinely valuable for groups but is also gated behind the priciest tiers on several platforms, and reviewers call some integrations cost-prohibitive. Plenty of independents run reservations and POS entirely separately; TableHelm currently has no POS integration and says so plainly.

Question 20

What is a prepaid reservation?

Accepted Answer

A prepaid reservation is a booking paid in full when it is made, like a theatre ticket: the tasting menu, event or seat is bought upfront and the sale is final (or refundable only outside a stated window). Tock built its whole model on this, and it works for experiences with committed kitchen prep and no walk-in substitute. Prepayment eliminates no-shows entirely, at the cost of booking friction and platform fees on the prepaid volume (Tock charges 2-3% depending on tier, plus card processing). For everyday tables, holds or deposits are gentler; prepayment shines when an empty seat is a dead loss.

Question 21

What is a restaurant seating chart?

Accepted Answer

The seating chart, or floor plan, is the map of every table in the room: numbers, seat counts, sections, and which tables combine. It is the host's chessboard. Before service, reservations are plotted onto it (the plot), matching party sizes to tables and spreading load across server sections; during service it tracks what is seated, dirty, or about to free up. Digital floor plans do this live and warn about conflicts, though reviewers note auto-plotting is not always accurate and hosts still override it. A chart also encodes house rules: which four-tops split into deuces, which section closes early, where the eight-top goes without blocking the runway to the kitchen.

Question 22

What is a service period?

Accepted Answer

A service period is a named block of operating hours the book is organised around: lunch, brunch, dinner, late night. Each period has its own start time, last seating, table availability and often its own menu and pacing rules. Reservation systems generate bookable slots from service periods (say, every 15 minutes from 5:30 to a 9:30 last seating on weekdays), which is why defining them precisely matters: the end of a service period is the last time a party can be seated, not the time the kitchen closes. Separate periods also keep reporting honest, since a strong dinner can hide a dying lunch if the numbers are mixed.

Question 23

What does turn and burn mean?

Accepted Answer

Turn and burn is the high-volume style of service where tables are turned as fast as hospitality allows: seat, serve, drop the check, reset, repeat. It is the operating mode of busy brunch spots, taquerias and any room where the line out the door is the business model. The craft is doing it without guests feeling rushed: pacing the kitchen so courses land promptly, pre-bussing, dropping the check with dessert instead of after a lap of the room. Turn-and-burn rooms live on short turn times and often skew toward walk-ins and waitlists rather than reservations, because a queue absorbs demand more flexibly than a book.

Question 24

What is turn time in a restaurant?

Accepted Answer

Turn time is how long a party occupies a table, from seating to the table being reset for the next guests. Typical planning numbers run from 45 minutes for a counter-service deuce to two and a half hours for a tasting menu, and they grow with party size: a solo diner eats faster than an eight-top celebrating a birthday. Turn time drives everything upstream: how many slots the booking page can offer, how many turns a table does per night, and therefore how many covers a service can hold. Measure yours by party size rather than guessing; a 15-minute error per turn compounds into an hour of chaos by 8 PM.

Question 25

How does a restaurant waitlist work?

Accepted Answer

A waitlist is the ordered queue of parties waiting for a table, each with a name, party size and quoted wait. Walk-ins join at the host stand (or online in some systems), get a realistic quote, and are called or texted when their table is ready; no-response entries are marked as left after a grace period. A good waitlist quote is honest and slightly padded: guests forgive a 25-minute wait quoted as 30, never the reverse. Waitlists also rescue overbooked nights, turning a stacked 7:30 into a managed queue. Dedicated waitlist apps (TablesReady, Waitlist Me) do only this; reservation platforms like TableHelm run the waitlist and the book on one screen.

Question 26

What is a walk-in?

Accepted Answer

A walk-in is a guest who arrives without a reservation. Healthy rooms usually run a deliberate mix: reservations guarantee a base of covers, walk-ins fill the gaps, absorb no-shows and keep the bar alive. Some operators hold a share of tables for walk-ins even on booked nights, both for regulars and because a visible queue markets the room. The walk-in's enemy is the fully committed book with a no-show problem: tables sit empty "waiting" while real guests are turned away, which is exactly the failure a card-hold policy and a live waitlist fix. Track your walk-in share by service; it should be a choice, not an accident.

The host-stand vocabulary

86'd (eighty-sixed)

Book and release

Buyout (private dining)

Camping (campers)

Cancellation window

Cover

Cover count

Credit card hold

Deposit (reservation)

Deuce

Four-top

Guest book (restaurant CRM)

Large party

Last seating

No-show

No-show fee

On a wait

Pacing

POS (point of sale)

Prepaid reservation

Seating chart (floor plan)

Service period

Turn and burn

Turn time

Waitlist

Walk-in

Set your table. Keep your money.