Hanna's booking system is a commission-free reservation system for UK restaurants and bars. A form on your own site or a conversation in plain English — either way, no fee per head, and the booking becomes the record your kitchen, your floor and your next sale all run on.
One booking · six steps
Your domain, your brand, your diary. Nobody takes a cut and nobody keeps the guest.
Replaces: paying a fee on guests you already earned
The awkward enquiries a form can't take — answered from your actual menu, tables and policies.
A form would have taken the booking and lost the question. Both routes end in the same diary and the same record — the guest just picks the one that suits them.
Replaces: the phone ringing in the middle of service
Your policy, enforced automatically, in your voice and from your address.
From: info@hotori.co.uk · sent 19:04, two seconds after booking
Thank you — we have you for 4 on Friday 31 July at 19:00.
We've noted the coeliac requirement and reserved table 12, which is our step-free table. If anything changes, just reply to this message.
Replaces: chasing deposits and no-shows by hand
This is where a booking stops being a booking and starts running your service.
Table 12 · 4 covers · 19:00
Booked Tuesday · step-free · held on card
The allergy is on the pass, on the till and on the ticket. Gluten items are blocked when the order is rung in — caught at the point of sale, not in the kitchen.
Replaces: a Post-it note on the pass
Every visit writes itself back. No data entry, and no platform holding the list.
The Osborne party
First visit March 2024 · 4 visits · books 3–4 days ahead
Replaces: a guest list that belongs to somebody else
A booking taken directly today is a cover you don't have to buy again.
Next week · forecast against capacity
The audience your own bookings built
None of that exists if a platform took the booking. The list, the preferences and the reason to write are all downstream of owning the first step.
Replaces: emailing the whole list and hoping
The difference
A booking platform puts you on a shelf and charges you when somebody picks you up. Hanna answers the enquiry the way your best host would — knowing the room, the menu, the allergens and the guest who's asking.
The maths
A per-cover fee is a charge a booking platform makes for every guest who arrives, typically £1 to £2.50 in the UK. It looks small on a quiet Tuesday and enormous in December. Put your own numbers in and see the annual figure — nothing is hidden, and nothing is sent anywhere.
What the platform costs you, a year
£21,708
At 400 covers a week, that is what you pay in booking fees before anybody has cooked anything — and it grows every time you have a good month. A flat fee doesn't move.
Worth knowing. Per-cover fees are only part of the bill. OpenTable added a 2% service fee on transactions in early 2026 — including on deposits and no-show charges that you set up, not them — and several operators first heard about it from their own guests. Quandoo is closing to UK restaurants at the end of 2026, so anyone on it is migrating whether they planned to or not. Those are the two risks a flat fee and an independent owner are meant to answer.
What you're really building
This is the part a booking platform can never give you, because it keeps the first link for itself. Take the booking directly and the whole chain becomes yours — and each pass round it makes the next one sharper.
Two years of this and you own something no platform will sell you: a complete, private record of everybody who has ever eaten in your room, what they liked, and what they're worth. That is the difference between renting your customers and owning your business.
In detail
The unglamorous list. All of it included — there is no booking tier above the one you're on.
Live table state, turn times and pacing you control — not a fixed slot grid that overbooks your kitchen at eight o'clock.
Dietary needs are captured the moment they're mentioned and carried to the pass, the till and every future booking.
Take a deposit, hold a card, or neither — set per service, per party size, or per experience. Your policy, enforced automatically.
Sent from your address, in your voice, at the times you choose. Guests reply to you, not to a platform.
Hanna scores the risk on a booking's history and pre-confirms the ones worth checking, rather than annoying everybody.
A cancellation goes straight to the people who wanted that night, in the order they asked.
Guests are answered in their own language, with allergen vocabulary human-checked rather than machine-translated.
Your website, a QR on the table, a link in your bio, and Google. One diary behind all of them.
Tasting menus, chef's counters, private hire and ticketed events — priced, deposited and capacity-managed.
In service
Not a pilot. Three different formats, one diary, no customisation. Each name here will take your call.
Before you ask
Book a demo
Fifteen minutes. We'll put your own awkward questions to it, show you the diary behind it, and be straight about what it doesn't yet do.
Book a demo