How do guests choose their own food by link for a big party?

For big parties and set-menu nights, each guest can choose their own food on their own link — and pay their own share — instead of the organiser collecting everyone's order.

For a big party, collecting twenty people's food choices by message is the part organisers dread. With this switched on, each guest chooses their own food on their own link — and, if you take pre-order money online, pays their own share. The kitchen still gets one order for the table, with every plate named.

It builds on pre-ordering (see How does pre-ordering work for large bookings?): the booking must qualify for pre-ordering first — pre-orders on, the party size, before your cut-off, a confirmed table booking — and your plan must include pre-orders (Pro and Complete).

Which bookings get a link for each guest

In Settings → Pre-orders, alongside your pre-order rules, you choose:

• Let each guest choose their own food — off until you switch it on.
• For parties of a number of guests or more (8 to start with). Smaller parties keep today's way: the organiser chooses for the table.
• And on every pre-order special date — for set-menu nights such as Christmas Day, every party can choose by link, whatever its size.
• Who pays for the food? — Organiser pays it all (the starting point) or Each guest pays their own. See Who pays, and how much below.
• Charge the organiser for unpaid shares — off until you switch it on, and only where food money is taken online. See If someone doesn't choose or doesn't pay below.

Switching it off stops new parties starting; a party that has already started carries on until its choices close, so nobody who has chosen or paid is left stranded.

How it works for the party

• The organiser starts it from their booking — they open Let everyone choose their own food and tap Share the party link (or your team starts it from the booking, and we email the organiser their links).
• They share one link with their group — WhatsApp, a text, an email.
• Each guest opens it and adds their name — a first name, and a last name if they like (their email comes first and is optional, as are their dietary needs — the box tells them their dietary needs go beside their dishes for your kitchen, never to the rest of the party; when your venue includes customer accounts, the same "Sign in with your email" offer as your other pages sits under the email (a code goes to every email; its sign-in link brings them back to the party link), and a guest whose phone is still signed in from the last 30 days finds their name already filled in; a signed-in guest with an allergy or dietary needs saved on their profile is asked "Your saved allergy: Sesame. Is it for this order?" — they must answer Yes or No before they can join, and Yes adds the saved words to their dietary needs for your kitchen, while No leaves them off) and gets their own link: they tap Join and choose, then Choose your food now (or Choose later — the page says they can come back to their link to choose, and by which day), pick their dishes from the same picker your booking page uses — a tab for each category, a search box, and an Allergies or a note for the kitchen box on each dish they choose — and save. If they gave an email we send them their link, so they can come back and change their choice until choices close.
• The organiser's page shows who has chosen and who still owes — names only, never anyone's dishes, dietary needs or contact details. From there they can Choose for them (for someone without a phone to hand), Add someone, send a guest their link again, or take off someone who isn't coming. When the organiser chooses for someone, anything that guest already told you about their dietary needs stays — whatever the organiser adds goes with it, never in its place. The organiser never sees a guest's own notes on their dishes and can't write one for them; a dish the guest had already noted keeps its note when the organiser chooses it for them again.

Set menus work the same way. If the booking's pre-order offers set menus (a special date's Christmas set menus, say — see How does pre-ordering work for large bookings?), each guest's picker shows them above the dishes: on their own link they press Choose your food now, then Choose on a set menu, pick a dish for each course, and Add to pre-order — their set menu is priced for one person and paid with their own share. When the organiser chooses a set menu for someone, the guest's own notes on its courses stay with them, as with dishes. Your kitchen sees every guest's courses with their name: the day sheet groups each table's set-menu plates by course with the names beside them ("Mains: Roast turkey ×2 (Sam, Alex), Nut roast ×1 (Jo)").

Never more names than the table's party size. A phone that joined before is welcomed back to the same seat, with a way to join as someone else for a shared phone.

Who pays, and how much

You choose under Who pays for the food? in Settings → Pre-orders, and a special date can choose its own in its The rest of the payment step (Same as normal uses your everyday choice). The food is never asked for twice:

• Organiser pays it all (the starting point) — guests only choose on their links; nobody pays through a link. The organiser pays for everyone's food once. On a date that asks for the rest of the payment (Christmas Day, say), the food is that rest: the organiser pays it by its due date, online or at the venue, and its reminder is for everyone's food. On other dates it follows your pre-order money choice: online, the organiser's party page offers Pay for everyone's food — one payment for everything chosen so far — and anything still unpaid when choices close is charged to their saved card if you've switched on Charge the organiser for unpaid shares and they agreed (otherwise it's paid at the venue); with Pay at the venue, it's paid for on the day.
• Each guest pays their own — each guest pays their own share straight after choosing (tap Pay my share), by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, on your own Stripe account — where you take pre-order money online, or on a date that asks for the rest of the payment (unless that date is paid at the venue only). With Pay at the venue they only choose, and each pays on the day. Anything already paid when booking that counts towards the food is shared out evenly per seat — on a date with the rest of the payment, that's the deposit — so nobody pays twice for the same food.

On a date that asks for the rest of the payment, with each guest paying their own: guests choose and pay until the day before the rest is due; the rest's reminder to the organiser counts what the guests have already paid; and on the due date any share still unpaid is the organiser's — charged to their saved card if you've switched on Charge the organiser for unpaid shares, otherwise asked for as the rest. If the organiser pays the rest first, the guests' links stop taking money, and a share paid on an old link is refunded automatically.

A party keeps the choice it started with, even if you change the setting later.

Each guest gets their own receipt for their share. The organiser can choose for anyone and pay any guest's share themselves — Choose for them and Pay their share sit next to each name on their party page.

If someone doesn't choose or doesn't pay

Nothing is cancelled. On the last day choices are open, anyone who hasn't chosen or paid gets one reminder, and the organiser gets a note of who's still missing. Where the organiser pays it all and you take the food money online (with no rest of the payment on the date), that note also says what everyone's food chosen so far comes to, with a Pay for everyone's food button to their party page — it's sent while the food is unpaid, even when everyone has chosen. After choices close, anyone who hasn't chosen chooses at the table.

What happens to a share that was chosen but not paid depends on Charge the organiser for unpaid shares:

• Off (the starting point) — nobody is charged; the guest pays at the venue on the day.
• On — the morning after choices close, every guest who chose but didn't pay is charged to the organiser's saved card, in one payment. The organiser gets a receipt listing whose shares it covered (first names and amounts — never anyone's dishes), and those guests' shares show as paid by the organiser. It runs only before the day of the booking, so your cut-off needs to be at least 2 days; a cut-off of 1 day or the booking day itself never charges anyone.

It applies to bookings made while the setting is on — their booking terms tell the organiser, and so do the party start card and their party page ("If any guest's share is still unpaid when choices close…") — and to any organiser who saves a card through a card link, which shows them the same words before they save it. Guests see that the organiser is charged if they don't pay in time. Seats nobody chose for, and guests taken off, are never charged. If there's no saved card, or the card is declined, nothing is taken — the unpaid shares are paid at the venue, and it isn't tried again; the booking shows why and the organiser is emailed.

No card saved yet? While choices are open, the organiser's party page offers Save a card — a secure card link on your Stripe account where they save a card (card, Apple Pay or Google Pay) and nothing is charged — and your team can Ask the organiser for a card from the booking's party view, which emails them the link. That card is only ever used for unpaid shares, never for a no-show fee, and it's removed once choices have closed and the charge has run.

What your team sees and can do

The booking shows Each guest chooses by link with who has chosen and paid, every guest's dishes and their dietary needs (only you see those — never the rest of the party). Your team can:

• Remind everyone still to choose or pay (each gets a fresh link to their own page);
• Send their link to one guest again, or Take off a guest who hasn't paid;
• Refund their share — the money goes back to the card that guest paid with, and we email them. You can keep their dishes on the order (they pay at the venue) or take them off the party. If the organiser paid that share, it goes back to the organiser's card and we email the organiser. Refunds need the password, or a manager's PIN, like other refunds.
• Refund the organiser's charge — gives back everything the organiser was charged for unpaid shares, in one go (those shares are then paid at the venue).

Once choices close, the booking says what happened — for example "The organiser was charged £48.00 for unpaid shares" or "Couldn't charge the organiser — £48.00 still to pay at the venue".

The kitchen sees one order for the table — tickets, the day sheet and the Pre-orders page — with each plate named ("Sam J"). Any dietary needs a guest gave print beside that guest's plates — on the kitchen ticket ("Dietary needs: no nuts"), the printed docket and the day sheet — so an allergy reaches the person cooking their dish. Each guest's dietary needs also show on the booking and on the party's view on the Pre-orders page. If a note changes after the ticket has gone to the kitchen, the ticket shows the new words, and a printed docket prints again as an amended ticket. Each guest's own note on a dish prints beside that dish the same way ("Note: no peppercorn sauce"). The notes are for the venue only: a guest never sees anyone else's, and the organiser's page, a share's payment page and the organiser's receipt never show them. If a guest asks for their data to be erased, their name and notes come off their plates at once — a docket still waiting at the printer is taken off its queue and the ticket prints again without them — and the organiser's own data download lists the dishes but never the other guests' names or notes.

On the Pre-orders page, a party choosing by link is marked Guests choosing by link, and opening it shows the same view as the booking, under The party’s food choices. The whole-table tools aren't offered for it — Take their order, Email pre-order request and Refund dishes… — because each guest chooses (and pays for) their own food: use the party's own buttons above instead. Remind un-ordered leaves these parties out (its confirmation says how many), and Take a pre-order tells you why it can't take one for them. The party is on the list from the moment it starts — "Guests choosing by link · nobody has chosen yet" until someone chooses — and Still missing before service counts it.

The automatic last-chance reminder (the whole-table email on the last day choices are open) and your team's "no dishes have been chosen" alert leave these parties out too: the party's own last-day reminders go to each guest still to choose, and the organiser gets a note of who that is. The booking's row doesn't show the amber Pre-order? chip for it, and the printed day sheet shows the party's own state — "Guests choosing by link · 3 of 8 have chosen" — instead of "No pre-order recorded".

Changing a choice

A guest can change their dishes as often as they like until choices close. Once they've paid for their choice it's locked — if something needs to change, they ask you, and your team changes it. If the booking is cancelled, every share is refunded along with the booking, following your usual cancellation rules.