Why restaurants lose bookings after the kitchen closes

Look at when your booking requests arrive. If your restaurant is like most, about a third of them come in after the last table has left: Instagram messages at 23:40, emails written in bed, a missed call from someone on their way home from another restaurant.

What happens to a request at 23:40

Nothing, usually. The phone goes to voicemail, the message sits unread, and the person who would answer it is asleep. In the morning there is prep, deliveries and the lunch service, so the reply goes out at 15:00 if it goes out at all.

By then the guest has often booked somewhere else. People who write late are planning something: a birthday, a visit from parents, a Friday with friends. They write to two or three places and go with the first one that answers.

The cost in plain numbers

• A table for four at an average spend of €35 a head is €140.
• Ten such requests a week that go unanswered or answered too late are €1,400 a week.
• Over a year that is more than a host's salary, lost in silence.

Three ways restaurants deal with it

A night phone. Someone on the team takes the restaurant phone home. It works until that person wants a life.

An auto-reply. "Thanks, we will get back to you." It stops the guest booking elsewhere for about an hour.

An AI host. Software that reads the message, checks the floor plan, and books the table on the spot, in the guest's language. This is what Nomi does, and it is why she exists.

What to look for if you try one

Make sure it books into your real reservation system rather than a separate calendar, that it asks for a phone number, that it knows your rules (largest group, last booking time, deposits), and that you can see every reply it sent the next morning.

If that sounds useful, see what Nomi costs. It is less than one host shift a week.