Here are the most frequently asked questions
Most venues have no idea — the rejections happen silently online before anyone on your team sees them. A guest tries to book, gets told “no availability,” and books elsewhere. Your staff never know it happened. For a 100-seat restaurant running just one busy service per week, that’s typically 30 rejected guests for that one service — which equates to around $109,200 in lost revenue every year (at an average customer spend of $70.00). Use our revenue loss calculator to see your own number.
A rejection is when a booking system returns “no availability” to a guest who wanted to book — they had intent, they tried, and the system turned them away despite there being empty tables and chairs that exceeded the requested booking size. This is different from a guest who visited your website and didn’t book because the price, menu, or timing didn’t suit them. Rejections are invisible losses — you never see them in your reporting because the booking was never created and your booking system has selected not to provide you with these details.
Because all booking systems — SevenRooms, OpenTable, Yelp, NowBookIt, Resy, Tock, Chope, ResDiary — are built on a static “table and table combination” frameworks and static table floor plans. You manually set table combinations, you manually set the fixed table arrangements and the system locks them in. However, when these parameters are set, they are simply guessed at to what the demand for a specific service will be. This guess cannot accurately and completely be correct as to the exact order and size that the booking requests will be made, this results in situations like Tetris where tables may be available but not in the configuration required by the booking request, resulting in the booking request being advised there is no availability when there are empty tables and chairs such that one or more previous bookings could be manually rearranged to accept the booking request that the online booking system rejected. This rejection problem starts happening when a restaurant is only 65% full. This means that every service where a restaurant is 65% full, maybe it could have been 70% or 80% or 90% full. That is genuine revenue your booking system lost you! Our research has also shown that if your online booking system manages to completely fill your venue to 100% despite the inefficiency of their TABLE frameworks, it means that the demand a restaurant had for that service was about 150% of their available capacity. Even in this case, it is important to understand exactly what your correct demand is as it is invaluable in understanding how much money a venue should be spending on marketing and advertising, and potentially using this information to consider at set prices.
A simple test: check if your system requires you to manually set table combinations before it can accept bookings. If yes — it’s static. Another tell is if your online booking widget ever shows “no availability” during a period when you know tables are free. That’s the static framework rejecting guests in real time. SevenRooms, OpenTable, Yelp, NowBookIt, Resy, Tock, Chope, ResDiary and all other restaurant booking systems operate this way. We know that is true as WizButler has been granted patents for it invention of the “Space & Time” framework in the USA, Canada, India, Singapore and Malaysia with other countries pending – a patent means that no one else in the world had ever thought of creating, using or applying your invention to solve the booking allocation problem.
Start with our free revenue loss calculator at wizbutler.com/restaurant-booking-system-revenue-loss-calculator — enter your seat count, average spend, and busy services per week and you’ll see your estimated annual loss in under a minute. For a more detailed venue-specific analysis, book a free demo and we’ll show you exactly where your current system is capping you.
Yes, it gets significantly worse. During peak periods your demand is highest, and the static framework gets tested the most and rejected bookings are at their highest exactly the moment you have a chance to maximise your revenue. A fully booked Christmas Eve on a TABLE based static system might actually be running at 65% physical capacity — meaning you’re turning away guests on your most valuable trading night of the year. It may even make you think that demand is soft, so you offer discounts and decrease your prices when it is your booking system rejecting hard earned booking requests.
Yes — in fact smaller venues often feel it more acutely because every rejected table represents a higher percentage of your total capacity. For a 40-seat venue running just one busy service per week at $70 per head, a static TABLE framework could cost you roughly $43,680 per year. The calculator at wizbutler.com/restaurant-booking-system-revenue-loss-calculator works for any venue size.
No. While voice AI answers your phone and takes bookings — it still feeds into and is dependent on the same static TABLE booking engine underneath. If your system caps at 65%, Voice AI caps at 65% too. The rejection problem is in the engine, not the interface. The right booking system eliminates rejections and the integration headaches at the same time. Plus, WizButler has developed its own Voice AI system, specifically our WizButler Space & Time framework – there is no better solution than teaming up The WizButler Booking system with the WizButler Voice AI system. The WizButler Voice AI system, also offers a fully trained Vice Chatbot for your website as well as your own personally branded and lip-synching Avatar to add a little more feeling and personalisation for your customers.
It’s a fundamentally different system — not an upgrade. WizButler is built around our own PIAST framework: People, Intent, Actions, Space, and Time. That means we treat your venue as a real-time physical operating space, not a set of static tables. That means booking and revenue is maximised, dynamic booking reallocations each time a new booking request is received, dynamic floor reconfiguration , unified guest profiles, and full revenue optimisation — all from one platform. No other booking system is built this way. The technology is patented across the USA, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and India with other countries pending.
Yes. This is one of the core advantages of the dynamic framework. WizButler accounts for different dining durations across your floor in real time — a table booked for a 90-minute lunch doesn’t block a 3-hour dinner booking starting two hours later. Static systems treat every booking as occupying a fixed block, which wastes enormous capacity across a busy service.
WizButler is designed for all types of food and beverage venues — fine dining restaurants, casual dining, cafes, bars, pubs, clubs, hotels with restaurant operations, and large multi-area venues. The platform is fully configurable to your specific floor plan, service style, and operational constraints. Whether you run one intimate 30-seat dining room or a 400-seat multi-level venue with a bar, terrace, and private dining room, the Space System adapts to your physical reality.
Yes. WizButler manages your live floor in real time — meaning it optimises both pre-booked and walk-in capacity simultaneously. Plus, as the WizButler system is fully configurable each restaurant can determine what operational features to turn on and off based on the restaurant’s individual service style and strategy. In one configuration, as walk-ins are seated, the system dynamically reconfigures the visual floor plan in real-time so your host and all staff always has an accurate live picture of what’s available and for how long. Also, as WizButler is an all-in-one seamless system the WizButler POS system floor Plan stays in sync.
Yes. WizButler is built as a multi-venue enterprise system and operates all group venues from a single platform and database. Each venue maintains its own floor plan, booking rules, and operational settings while sharing a unified database — meaning guest profiles, preferences, and booking history are visible across your entire group. This is a significant advantage for marketing, loyalty programmes, and understanding your guests’ behaviour across locations.
Yes — Functions and Events is an integral and dedicated WizButler module that sits seamlessly with your bookings, ordering, and POS. Enquiries, proposals, deposits, menus, and event-day operations all sit in the same platform as your regular restaurant bookings — no separate system, no manual handoffs between your events coordinator and front-of-house team. Plus the WizButler Function and Events system is a full and complete system in its own right with automated proposals, contracts, electronic signing capability as you would expect from a world class best of breed module as all modules with WizButler are.
Yes. WizButler provides a fully configurable website widget and a completely configurable booking form. You control the appearance, the fields shown to guests, the booking rules, prepayment requirements, and the messaging — all without needing a developer. WizButler also allows venues to create as many as additional booking widgets as they like to ensure that they maximise all possible booking channels.
WizButler also offers a Function enquiry widget that links directly to the WizButler function module.
WizButler also offers a voice AI solution as well as a website voice chatbot.
They’re now curious about the platform — show depth
Yes. Every guest who books through WizButler builds a profile — booking history, dietary requirements, special occasions, seating preferences, spend patterns, and any notes your team adds. This profile is available to your team before the guest arrives, so every visit feels personalised. For venue groups, the profile is visible across all locations.
Yes — autonomous VIP seating is a WizButler feature that competing platforms cannot offer due to their inefficient allocation systems. You define what VIP means for your venue, and the system automatically prioritises and allocates seating accordingly when a recognised guest books. Your best guests always get your best tables without your host needing to manually intervene.
WizButler has a built-in marketing system for creating automatons, campaigns, promotions, and newsletters — with analytics tracking to measure results. You can see where bookings are coming from, which campaigns drove revenue, and where potential bookings dropped off before completing. This can complement or replace your current use of external email marketing tools.
However, a key ingredient in WizButler’s marketing module is its 360-degree visibility of all information within the one unified data platform, single source of truth and its ability to offer ultimate segmentation and customer targeting
Yes — your guest data belongs to you, not WizButler. This is an important distinction from some competing platforms that retain ownership of your booking data, leaving you vulnerable if you ever want to switch systems. With WizButler, you have full access to export your data.
That’s exactly the situation WizButler is built for. Running multiple disconnected platforms means manual reconciliation, data gaps, and no single view of your guest or your revenue. WizButler replaces all of them — one login, one database, one bill. Your software cost is typically cut by over 50%.
The WizButler team handles the entire migration and setup for you. You don’t need to do it yourself. We request your floor plan, trading hours, menus and operational details, and we build your venue in the system. Restaurants can be live within 14 days of providing that information. One day you can be using multiple systems and the next day it can be the WizButler all-in-one system. Similarly, venue groups have also taken a staged approach where we first upgrade their booking system to WizButler followed by other systems, so we are just as familiar with that approach. WizButler does not propose a one migration solution that is right for all venues, it works with each venue to achieve the best outcome for that venue.
Your existing reservations are migrated across as part of the WizButler setup process. The WizButler team works with you to ensure no bookings are lost or disrupted during the transition. We schedule migrations to avoid your peak trading days so the cutover is as seamless as possible for your front-of-house team.
Yes — as long as you have access to your current data and it isn’t proprietary to your existing provider. If your current booking system claims ownership of your guest data, that’s a serious issue and another reason to switch sooner rather than later.
Front-of-house staff typically need a half-day to get comfortable — the WizButler interfaces have been designed so that they are intentionally familiar to reduce the learning curve when moving from another system (despite the underlying system being significantly different). For your system administrator we recommend a little more time to explore the platform before going live. Training is available via video tutorials, daily live video sessions, or face-to-face at your venue. Plus WizButler staff will be available onsite when you go live to ensure the transition is seamless.
Review your contract for the notice period and exit terms. In the meantime, book a WizButler demo so you understand exactly how big your savings and benefits using WizButler will be. In most cases even if you just signed a new contract the exit cost will be a small fraction of the additional revenue and savings you can generate using WizButler.. Venues have found the additional revenue achieved in the first month using WizButler more than offset their exit costs. We can help you work through the numbers.
While WizButler is cloud-based it is designed for the reliability demands of live restaurant services. We recommend speaking to the WizButler team about your specific connectivity setup during onboarding — for high-volume venues we advise on low cost backup connectivity options to ensure your operation is never dependent on a single connection.
WizButler’s unified platform handles bookings, functions, voice, ordering, POS, KDS, Gift Certificates, Vouchers, Marketing, CRM and payments in one seamless unified platform — eliminating the need for most of the integrations restaurants currently rely on. For accounting specifically, speak to the WizButler team about your current setup during your demo and we’ll advise on the best integration approach for your venue.
Switching to WizButler typically cuts your total software spend by over 50% compared to running multiple separate platforms. Hardware upgrade is estimated at under $5,000 for a 100 seat restaurant — and in many cases that cost is recovered within the first month or couple of months additional bookings alone.
Most venues running three or more separate platforms are paying between $1,500 and $3,000 per month in combined subscriptions — plus the hidden cost of integration platforms to connect them, and staff time spent on manual reconciliation between systems. WizButler replaces all of that with one subscription, typically cutting total software cost by over 50%. The exact saving depends on your current setup — bring your current invoices to your demo and we’ll show you the comparison.
WizButler is cloud-based and runs in any browser — Google Chrome is recommended. The WizButler system is a fully responsive system meaning that it operates equally well on a 24-inch touchscreen that may be used by a large busy formal restaurant to a 15.5 inch POS terminal, iPad, Tablet or even your mobile phone. Our recommendation on what hardware you will need will be based on your specific requirements and if your equipment is not old or proprietary you can probably use your existing hardware.
Hardware requirements depend on your venue setup. For most restaurants the upgrade involves replacing outdated terminals with modern touchscreen hardware, existing hardware with an internet connection can be reused. The WizButler team will assess your current hardware during the discussions and advise exactly what’s needed.
Speak to the WizButler team about current subscription terms during your demo. Our focus is on delivering results that make staying an easy decision — not locking venues into contracts they can’t exit.
Yes. The core platform includes the dynamic booking system, functions and events system, website widgets, prepayments, deposits, refunds, CRM, Membership and Marketing. Additional modules — including Voice AI, dynamic POS, POS, KDS, QR Code dine-in ordering, takeaway ordering — can be added later at any time.
Stan Delimitrou, Director and Executive Chef of a 300-seat venue in Melbourne, found they were turning away 138 guests for just one busy service — $9,660 for that service or $$502,320 annualised just for that one service — without realising it. That stopped after switching to WizButler. The revenue recovery in the first month covered the cost of hardware that needed to be upgraded.
Several venues have recovered their full hardware and setup cost within the first month of going live — purely from the additional bookings that the dynamic Space System fills that their previous system was rejecting. The speed of recovery depends on your seat count, average spend, and how many busy services you run per week.
WizButler’s Space System is built on patented technology — the Petroulas invention — with patents held across the USA, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Other countries pending. No other restaurant booking platform operates on this framework.
No. WizButler is the only platform in the world with this dynamic booking allocation and floor reconfiguration methodology. In fact, the WizButler system is a world-first invention and a completely different approach in managing restaurants and dynamic spaces and not as fixed tables. This is the reason that the WizButler has been granted patents in the USA, Canada, India, Singapore and Malaysia with other countries like Australia pending which means that no other company can offer you this dynamic real-time seamless technology – if they claim they can do what WizButler can do they are simply lying. Plus if you wish to share their claims with us we would be happy to clarify these claims for you
Support with a 24-hour response for non-urgent issues. For anything urgent, call us directly and it’s addressed immediately. Your team also has access to online training videos free of charge, daily live video training sessions, and the option to arrange private training or a site visit. We also offer a premium support service at a very affordable cost.
Yes. The WizButler team has over 18 years of experience operating restaurants, cafes, bars, and events for 1,500+ people. We can help with operational strategy, kitchen layout, staff training, and getting the most out of the platform — not just onboarding.
No pressure. Start with our free revenue loss calculator to understand how much revenue your current booking system is losing you.. If the number surprises you, book a 20-minute demo and we’ll show you exactly how WizButler works for a venue your size. No obligation, no hard sell, we let the software and the outcomes it can produce for you tell the story.