Table Reservations | Details on the reservation engine

In this section we explain the working of the reservation engine. The combination of the parameters allow for a self-regulating reservation system, making sure visitors come in gradually (per interval within the dining slot), total capacity is never exceeded while leaving full control with staff.

By defining intervals and a maximum capacity for these intervals, the restaurant can manage the rate at which visitors arrive in the restaurant (guests arriving gradually). If a service start and end time, and an interval length is defined, Cubigo calculates the timeslots that are available and offered in the reservation form. ‘Reservation length’ is the time the table is actually taken. When a reservation is made, this time is used to book one or more intervals/timeslots. So be sure the reservation length is not defined too short!

An example: a community restaurant opens at 5 pm and closes at 8 pm. The restaurant calculates that a table is taken for 1 hour each reservation (reservation length). The restaurant capacity handles 120 people/seats, but staff would like customers to come in waves of eg 20 people each half hour (interval length). They also want to keep 20 seats open to be flexible, not making these available in the frontoffice.

The setup for this table reservation case would be:

• total restaurant capacity: 120
• concurrent capacity: 100
• service start time: 5 pm
• service end time: 8 pm
• reservation length: 60 minutes
• interval length: 30 minutes
• new capacity, seats per interval: 20

These timeslots would become available in the reservation form at following instances: 5 pm – 5:30 pm – 6 pm – 6:30 pm – 7 pm. The last available timeslot being the service end time minus the reservation length (8 pm -60 minutes). 20 new places can be booked at each interval, which brings max. number of booked places to 100 if all slots are fully booked.

If a resident books a table for 2 at 5 pm, then 2 persons would be counted for the interval at 5 pm and at 5:30 pm, because reservation length is set to 60 minutes. The maximum new capacity for each slot is 20 people. So 18 more seats can be booked at the 5 pm slot. If this number is reached the slot greys out in the reservation form. If the concurrent capacity is reached, slots also close. Eg when staff books a reservation for 100 people at 5 pm in the backoffice, the concurrent capacity is reached and slots at 5 pm and 5:30 pm would close in the frontoffice.

Backoffice staff is not limited by maxima set on service level (concurrent capacity, new capacity, max party size), only by the total capacity on location level. This means that in the above example, staff could reserve an additional 20 seats for 5 pm (on top of 100), but then total restaurant capacity is reached, and the slots also close in the backoffice.

The frontoffice reservation form greys out a timeslot if the new capacity for this slot has been reached or if the concurrent capacity has been reached. The backoffice reservation form only greys out timeslots when the total capacity has been reached. 

Staff could also keep the concurrent capacity at 100 and allow for 30 seats per interval (total 150 in example above) to give more flexibility in the spread of arriving residents. Once 100 seats are booked in total, all slots grey out in the frontoffice.

Calculation for interval 6 pm - 6.30 pm:

• concurrent capacity left 65=100-5-10-10-10
• total capacity left 85=120-5-10-10-10