Seating guests and the live floor

A live floor means that at any minute the host can answer four questions: which tables are taken, who's sitting at them, who can be offered a place right now, and which booking is coming to each table next. If the answers have to be remembered or looked up in several places, the peak hour brings queues at the entrance and empty tables that are “sort of taken”. Below is how to build such a picture in practice.

What the host does at the door

The host stands between the guest and the floor, and the job comes down to quick decisions:

• find out whether the guest has a booking;
• see whether their table is free and whether they've come early;
• seat a guest without a booking if there's a suitable place;
• politely explain the wait if there's no place yet;
• pass the information on to the waiters.

Each decision needs current data. An example. On a Friday evening a group of four without a booking comes up to the host stand. The notebook shows a booking at the window table for 21:00, and it's now 19:15. If the host knows how long a visit usually lasts, they can seat the group on the understanding that the table will be needed by nine. If not, it's either turn them away or take a risk.

Table status

The first layer of the live floor: every table has a clear current status. There's no need to invent ten statuses. The basics are enough:

• free;
• taken: guests are seated, and it's known since when;
• held for the next booking;
• being cleared or prepared, if you have a clearing stage.

What matters for reliable tracking:

1. The status is changed by whoever sees the situation. The host marks the seating at the moment the guests sit down, not from memory at the end of the evening.
2. The seating time is recorded. It's needed to understand how long the table has been taken and to plan the next booking.
3. Everyone sees the same status. The host, the manager and the general manager look at one picture, not at different versions.

Such a picture is closely tied to protection against overlaps. To learn how not to give one table to two groups, read the piece about a double-booked table.

Walk-ins

Venues with live seating rarely stop at bookings: people come in “off the street” all the time. If you don't track them, the evening turns into chaos: a table that's “sort of free” turns out to be taken by guests without a booking, and the booking for that table arrives half an hour later.

How to work with such guests:

• Record them the same way as bookings. Let a walk-in seating go into the same record: table, time, number of people.
• Estimate the window. Look at the table's next booking and tell the guest honestly how much time they have.
• Offer options. Another table, the bar, a wait with a clear time.
• Don't promise what you can't deliver. “A table in twenty minutes” is better than “we'll figure something out”.

Good practice is not to leave walk-ins “for later”. The record of them is needed not for a report but for the next shift and for understanding how the evening is going.

The next booking at each table

The main idea of the live floor is that a table should be seen not in isolation but together with what awaits it. Information about the next booking answers these questions:

• can a walk-in be seated at this table, and for how long;
• is it time to hurry the clearing;
• does the table need preparing for special wishes (for example, that the guest likes a particular spot, which we wrote about in the article about regular guests).

An example. A table for six frees up at 20:10, and its next booking is at 21:30. That's a window of an hour and a half: you can seat a small walk-in group, warning them in advance. If the next booking were at 20:30, the window would be too short, and it would be better to just prepare the table.

For this, each table needs its next booking in view, with the time and the number of guests. If it has to be looked up in a list, it won't help at the moment the guest is standing in front of you.

Shifts

The floor doesn't rest on one person. A shift ends, and the information about what's happening on the floor has to be passed on.

What's worth passing between shifts:

• which bookings remained unfulfilled, and why;
• which guests left unhappy and what they were promised;
• which tables are out of service (a breakage, a party, a move);
• any arrangements that didn't make it into the records.

If the floor is run in one place, the handover comes down to reading what's already written. If it lives in one person's notebook, another's chat and a third person's head, the shift starts with fifteen minutes of questioning. We wrote about this problem in detail in the article about replacing the paper reservation book.

A five-minute briefing before opening

The live floor starts before the first guest. A short check before the shift saves nerves at peak time:

1. Look through the evening's bookings in time order and note the large groups.
2. Find the regular guests and special wishes so you can assign them tables in advance.
3. Decide which tables mustn't be given to walk-ins before a certain hour.
4. Check which waiter has which zone, so the host knows whom to hand guests over to.
5. Agree who keeps the seating marks and who answers guests' messages.

The last point is often forgotten. If the host is greeting guests, answering messengers and marking tables all at once, something inevitably slips. Divide the roles in advance, even if there are only two of you on shift.

Peak hours

The live floor is useful not only in the moment but also in hindsight. If seatings are recorded, they show:

• at which hours the floor is fullest;
• how long guests stay at a table on average;
• where they heard about you.

This helps with practical questions: how many people to put on a shift, from what time to start holding tables for bookings, how realistically you estimate the length of a visit. Without seating records, it all turns into conversations like “I think Thursdays are quieter”.

Draw conclusions carefully. A few evenings' data doesn't reveal patterns, and the season and events change the picture. But the habit of looking at real occupancy beats planning by feel.

How it works in GuestKeepr

In the dashboard of the GuestKeepr virtual front desk, the Tables section works as a live floor: it's where guests' seating is marked, walk-ins are added and shifts are visible, and each table shows its next booking. The dashboard works on a phone, so the host can run the floor without standing at a computer.

Once guests are seated, the booking is protected: it can't be cancelled or moved. Bookings for one table that overlap in time are impossible. The Statistics section shows seatings, peak hours and the average time at a table, as well as where guests heard about the venue.

The limits: GuestKeepr doesn't replace the host and doesn't seat guests by itself. The bot takes bookings in messengers, and the people on the floor mark what's really happening. Orders and bills aren't kept in the dashboard: it's about bookings, seating and guests.

Frequently asked questions