Should your restaurant take booking deposits?

Deposits protect your covers but can cost you bookings. Here's how to decide when to ask for money up front, how much to take, what your refund policy should say, and when a card-on-file no-show fee works better instead.

Most advice on restaurant deposits is written by people selling deposit software. So, briefly: we make booking software, and there are nights and venues where taking a deposit is the wrong call. This is about telling those apart.

The useful question isn't "should we take deposits?" It's "which bookings are worth protecting, and what does asking cost me?" Because asking always costs something. Every extra step between "I'd like a table" and "table booked" loses you some bookings you'd otherwise have had. A deposit is a big step.

When a deposit earns its keep

Deposits make sense where a lost booking is genuinely expensive and hard to refill:

• Large parties. A no-show on a table of twelve isn't twelve times worse than a table of two —

it's worse than that, because you turned other bookings away to hold it and you can't refill it at 8pm on a Saturday.

• Fixed-price and tasting menus. You bought the food. Sometimes you bought it days ago.
• Peak, unrepeatable dates. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas party season, New Year's

Eve. Demand exceeds supply, so a deposit costs you almost nothing in lost bookings — anyone who won't pay it is replaced by someone who will.

• Chef's table, private dining, anything with a staffing cost attached to that specific booking.
• Bookings from people with no stake in your reputation. Not cynicism, just the mechanics: a

regular who lives up the road will phone to cancel. A visitor who booked four restaurants "to be safe" won't.

When it costs you more than it saves

• Midweek, average-value covers. If the table would have generated £40 and you lose one in six

bookings to deposit friction, the maths turns against you fast.

• Venues competing on convenience. If the place next door takes a booking in two taps and you ask

for card details, some of those bookings simply become their bookings.

• Small parties in a venue that also takes walk-ins. You can refill a two-top. The deposit is

protecting against a loss you'd mostly recover anyway.

• Any night you're not full. A deposit protects covers. It doesn't create them, and it can't

fill a quiet Tuesday.

The pattern: deposits are for scarcity. The busier and more constrained the booking, the more sense a deposit makes. Asking for a deposit on a night you're half empty is charging admission to your own quiet room.

Which bookings are worth protecting with a deposit. Usually worth it: set and tasting menus you've bought food for; large parties you turned other bookings away for; peak dates such as Valentine's, Christmas and New Year; private dining and private hire bookings. Usually not: midweek two-tops at an average spend; any night you aren't already full; small parties in a venue with strong walk-in trade; regulars who always phone if their plans change.

How much to take

Take an amount that reflects what you actually lose if the table vanishes — not the full value of the booking, and not a number that feels like a punishment.

• Per person or per table? Per person for menus and large parties, where your loss scales with

headcount. A flat amount per booking is simpler for everything else.

• A part-payment, not a purchase. £10 a head reads as a commitment. £45 a head reads as being

asked to buy dinner in advance from a restaurant you've never been to.

• Be careful with pay-in-full. It's the right answer for tasting menus and ticketed nights, and

the wrong answer for a normal Friday.

• Say what happens to it. "£10 per person, deducted from your bill on the night" is a completely

different sentence to "£10 per person deposit", and it converts better, because it's clearer.

Your refund policy is the whole thing

This is where deposits go wrong. Not the amount — the terms, and whether the guest understood them before they paid.

You have three honest options:

• Fully refundable before a deadline. Cancel with 24 or 48 hours' notice, get it all back. Least

friction, still filters out the people who book four places at once, and it's the default worth starting from.

• Partly refundable. Keep a share if they cancel late. A fair middle ground when your real loss

is real but partial.

• Non-refundable. Justifiable for a bought-in tasting menu or a ticketed event. Hard to justify

for a normal table, and it's the policy most likely to end in a public argument or a chargeback.

Whichever you pick:

• Set a deadline and state it in hours. "24 hours before your booking" is unambiguous. "Short

notice" is not.

• Show the terms before payment, not after. In the booking flow, on the page where they're

entering their card. Not only in a confirmation email that arrives once the money has gone.

• Repeat it in the confirmation. People book weeks ahead and forget.
• Make cancelling easy. Sounds backwards, but a guest who can cancel in one tap at 5pm gives you

a table you can resell. A guest who can only cancel by phoning during service just doesn't turn up.

The legal bit

This isn't legal advice, and if you're in any doubt take some. But three principles are worth knowing:

• A cancellation charge should be a genuine reflection of your loss, not a penalty. Charges that

look punitive are the ones that get challenged and don't survive it.

• Your terms have to be clear, prominent, and agreed before payment. Buried terms are weak terms.
• Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a term that's unfair to the consumer may simply be

unenforceable — so "non-refundable, no exceptions, cancel a month ahead" isn't as strong as it sounds.

And keep some discretion. A guest whose plans collapse for a genuinely awful reason, refunded outside your policy, tells people about it. So does the other kind.

If you're a diner who's landed here wondering whether you'll get your deposit back: it depends entirely on the restaurant's own policy and its notice deadline, which should have been shown to you before you paid — check your confirmation email first, then phone the restaurant. Most venues have more discretion than their policy page suggests, and asking early is worth far more than asking late.

The alternative most venues should look at first

A deposit isn't the only tool, and for a lot of venues it isn't the right one.

Card on file with a no-show fee takes nothing at the time of booking. The guest saves a card, and you charge an agreed fee only if they don't turn up. The guest pays nothing in the normal case, which means far less booking friction than a deposit — and it targets the actual problem, which is empty tables, not unpaid bills.

Deposit versus card on file. A deposit: money is taken up front, booking friction is higher, it suits set menus, large parties and peak dates, and it protects against cancellations and no-shows. Card on file with a no-show fee: no money at booking and the card is saved only, booking friction is lower, it suits everyday cover protection, and it protects against no-shows plus late cancellations if you choose.

The difference in the guest's head is the part that matters: a deposit reads as "am I buying dinner now?", while a saved card reads as "fine, I'm turning up anyway."

Plenty of venues end up with both: a deposit on large parties and set menus, card-on-file on everything else. That's usually the right shape.

The short version

• Don't apply one rule to every booking. Protect the expensive, hard-to-refill ones.
• Take an amount that matches your real loss, and say it's deducted from the bill.
• Set a deadline in hours, show the terms before payment, repeat them in the confirmation.
• Make cancelling easy — a cancelled table is a resellable table.
• If the goal is fewer empty seats rather than money up front, try card-on-file first.

How this works in ResoFlow

If you're running deposits in ResoFlow: your cancellation policy is one setting — no refund, full refund, or a percentage — with a deadline you set in hours, and refunds within the policy are issued automatically when a guest cancels in time. Guests see exactly what they'd lose before confirming a late cancellation, so nothing is taken quietly. The same policy covers pay-in-full bookings.

No-show protection is separate and works the way described above: the card is saved but never charged at booking, the fee is a flat amount per table rather than per guest, it only applies to parties above a size you choose, and it's only ever charged when your team deliberately marks a no-show — with a delay you set, so re-seating the guest cancels it. The card is released automatically as soon as the booking finishes.

Both features are available on our Bistro plan and above, and both need Stripe connected. ResoFlow's own platform fees for each payment type are listed in the app on Settings → Payments & deposits → Payments, with Stripe's processing fees shown separately.

More detail: booking deposits and no-show protection, or the step-by-step in when guests get their deposit back.

If you'd rather not work it out alone

Most of this is judgement rather than software, and it's easier with a second opinion in the room. Our setup service is £199 and currently free: we go through which features suit your venue, configure the plan you choose, and import your existing bookings and customer list. Deciding between deposits and card-on-file — and picking a refund policy your guests will accept — is exactly the kind of thing it's for. It's remote, and most venues are live within a day of arranging their transition day, subject to availability.

Plans start at £39 a month with no per-cover fees, and there's a free Taster plan if you want to try the system first — deposits and no-show protection themselves start on Bistro. Free setup has the detail, or email [email protected] and tell us what your deposit problem actually looks like.