Working the floor
The host stand and the floor manager: the board, the map, seating, walk-ins, the waitlist, check-in scanning and no-shows.
Two of Reserve’s three surfaces are for the people working the room. The host stand is the tablet at the door. The floor manager is the same job on a phone. Both answer requests from the bell (see Requests, changes and holds) and both open the same booking sheets.
The host stand
Across the top: your brand mark, a service stepper, the clock, the requests bell, the scanner and your account.
Four figures under it:
| Tile | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Covers booked | Covers for this service, over capacity. |
| Tables seated | Occupied tables, over the total. |
| On waitlist | Parties waiting. |
| Occupancy | The floor as a percentage. |
Then two rails: the reservation board on the left, filtered by All, Upcoming, Seated or Completed, with New reservation and Seat walk-in at its foot; and on the right the floor map above the waitlist.
The stepper is a peek. Stepping to another service shows you its bookings, its capacity and its pending requests, and lets you accept or decline a new booking, because that attaches nothing. Everything that touches the live floor is withheld: seating, walk-ins, table taps and change-request answers. The map is not even drawn, and a folded summary stands in its place. Three of the four tiles go blank rather than printing a zero, because “0 tables seated” under Thursday’s label reads as a claim about Thursday. The clock in the app bar keeps saying what time it actually is, however far ahead you are reading.
The floor manager
The same job in one column on a phone: an app bar, a headline of covers and occupancy, and one scrolling list under segmented tabs, Upcoming, Seated and Waitlist, with the waiting count carried in the tab itself. A search field finds a guest by name or phone.
Two buttons float over it: the scanner at the bottom left and the walk-in + at the bottom right.
The floor map
Five table states, each with a label and a legend under the grid:
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free | Nobody on it. |
| Reserved | Held for a booking. |
| Seated | A party is on it. |
| Joined | Part of a join, carrying a join badge. |
| Cancelled, acknowledge | The guest cancelled while seated. Release is manual. |
A first tap never does anything destructive. Tapping an occupied table opens its sheet, which is a read. Tapping a free table with nothing armed just flashes “T5 is free · 4 seats”. A table only changes hands when you have already armed a seat or a move and then tap where it should go.
The table sheet offers Clear · free the table, Move table and No-show. A table in the Cancelled, acknowledge state is the exception, and it is deliberate: no timer frees it, and it takes a single Acknowledge · release table.
Seating, walk-ins and the waitlist
Seat a booking by arming it and tapping a free table, or from its own sheet. Moving a seated party works the same way.
Walk-ins take a name, a phone, a party size and one or more free tables, picked as chips (two or more compose a join on the spot). Submitting seats the party immediately. The form clears itself when you dismiss it, because the stand is a shared device.
The waitlist takes a name, a phone, a party size and a quoted wait. Rows show when the party joined and what they were quoted, and the first one wears a Next badge. Pressing Seat finds the smallest free table that fits and promotes them in one tap. If nothing fits yet it says so and arms the map, so you can pick tables yourself or compose a join. An X removes a party who left.
The waitlist is a live-service thing. Peeking another day, it says “The waitlist is for the live service.”
New reservation takes a name, a phone, a party size, a time from today’s slots, tables, a tag and a note for the floor.
Check-in scanning
Both surfaces have a scanner. Point it at the QR on the guest’s confirmation.
Scanning only opens the booking. Nothing is marked or seated. That is a firm rule, so a code read by accident can never seat a party.
A manual fallback sits under the camera at all times: type the booking reference and press Find. If the camera has not decoded anything after a few seconds, the overlay suggests the usual cause, glare on a phone screen, and points at the field.
The scanner tells you when a code is the wrong kind: the venue’s own printed booking QR is not a guest’s check-in code, and it says so rather than failing blankly.
No-shows
No-show is offered on a confirmed or arrived booking’s sheet, and from the table sheet for a party already seated. It says what it did: “Marked no-show”, or “Marked no-show, table released” when a table was being held.
The booking sheet
Opening any booking gives you the time, covers, table, source, how many times that guest has visited, allergens, and the phone where your role is allowed to see it. Move table offers the free tables that fit as chips. A History timeline records the booking being created, confirmed, marked arrived, finished, cancelled, declined or marked no-show.
The footer offers only what the booking’s status allows: Accept and Decline on a pending one, Seat on a confirmed or arrived one, Finish · free the table on a seated one, and No-show.