A four-top that does not show up at 7:15 PM on a Friday is not just an empty table — it is an $180 cover, a wasted prep, and a waitlist guest who walked across the street to your competitor. The No-Show Recovery automation gives you a 12-minute reclaim window, hits the missing party with a retry text, and rebooks the table from the waitlist before the BOH has even fired the apps.
What it ships with
- GHL workflows:
No-Show – 12 Min Reclaim,No-Show – Waitlist Re-Offer,No-Show – Deposit Capture,No-Show – EOD Report - Three pre-written SMS templates (gentle retry, final notice, deposit-charge confirmation)
- Waitlist queue with party-size and daypart matching
- Stripe charge-capture logic that converts the deposit hold into a charge after the reclaim window expires
- Manager dashboard: live “tables in reclaim” view at the host stand
- Custom fields:
reclaim_started_at,reclaim_status,deposit_captured,no_show_count
The flow (step-by-step)
1. Reservation marked as tardy
At the booked time + 7 minutes, the host taps “not yet sat” on the tablet. The contact enters the reclaim workflow.
2. First retry text (T+7 min)
“Hi [first_name] — we’re holding your table for [party_size]. Are you still on the way? Reply YES to keep, NO to release.” Most diners answer within 90 seconds.
3. Final notice (T+12 min)
If no reply or a “NO,” the table is released. A final SMS lets the diner know the deposit will be charged per the policy they agreed to at booking.
4. Waitlist re-offer (T+12 min, parallel)
The waitlist is scanned for a matching party size and daypart preference. The next-in-line guest gets a “your table is ready in 10 minutes — confirm now” SMS. First confirmed reply wins the table.
5. Deposit capture
The Stripe hold converts to a charge. The diner receives an itemized receipt with the cancellation policy reprinted for the record. This is what keeps chargebacks down.
6. End-of-night reporting
At close, the GM gets a Slack/SMS digest: total reservations, sat covers, no-shows, recovered no-shows, deposits captured, and waitlist conversion rate. The data feeds your next staffing decision.
What you can expect
Operators typically see the reclaim flow recover 30-50% of no-show tables on Friday and Saturday nights — tables that would otherwise have sat empty for the rest of the seating window. Deposit-charge revenue tends to cover the cost of the snapshot inside 60-90 days at a mid-volume restaurant. No-show count per diner becomes a real metric you can act on: a contact with no_show_count >= 2 gets flagged for deposit-required-on-next-booking.
Setup & customization
Pre-built: every timer, every message, the Stripe capture logic, and the waitlist matcher.
What you tweak in 10 minutes: the reclaim window duration (12 minutes is the default — some operators run 10, some 15), the SMS copy, your deposit-policy language, and the no-show threshold that auto-flags a contact for deposit-only booking.
Compliance notes
Retry and waitlist SMS run on a 10DLC-registered campaign with restaurant-specific use-case approval. Both messages are transactional under TCPA — they follow a booking the diner initiated and an explicit deposit agreement. Opt-out is honored at the carrier level via STOP, and any contact who opts out is excluded from the reclaim workflow automatically. Deposit-charge language presented at booking is captured as a timestamped consent record in the contact’s GHL note history — your defense if a chargeback is filed.
Stop eating no-show losses every weekend. Install the full Restaurant Snapshot for $997 or the lite build for $997, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Buy now or book a walkthrough to see the reclaim window running against a live waitlist.