Every restaurant that takes reservations has a no-show policy. Most of them are a line on the booking page that nobody reads and nobody enforces, which makes them a hope rather than a policy.
The wording is the easy part. What makes a policy work is whether anyone can act on it at eight o'clock on a Saturday — and whether the guest agreed to it clearly enough that acting on it doesn't start an argument.
Decide what you're protecting
A no-show on a Tuesday two-top costs you a little. A no-show on a Saturday eight-top can cost you the margin on the night, because you held your biggest table through your best seating and turned away the walk-ins who'd have filled it.
So don't write one policy for everything. Most restaurants need two:
- Standard reservations: a confirmation and a reminder, no card.
- Large parties, peak nights and special events: a card held against a fee.
Asking for a card on every Wednesday two-top costs you bookings you'll never see — people who close the page rather than enter card details for a casual dinner. Save the card for the tables whose loss actually hurts.
Reminders do most of the work
Before charging anyone anything, make cancelling easy.
A lot of no-shows aren't people who didn't care. They're people whose plans changed, who meant to call, and who either forgot or couldn't get through. A reminder the day before that makes cancelling a one-tap reply catches most of them — and catches them early enough to rebook the table.
Timing matters more than wording. A table released the night before can usually be refilled from the waitlist or the next morning's calls. The same table released at five o'clock on the day often can't. That asymmetry is why the calls you miss after closing are so expensive: the cancellation that hits voicemail at ten at night becomes a no-show the following evening.
When you do hold a card
If you take a card for a large party, three things decide whether you can charge it without a fight.
The guest saw the fee before booking. Not in the confirmation email afterwards — on the screen, or in the conversation where they agreed. "There's a $25-per-person charge if you cancel within 24 hours or don't arrive" is clear. "Cancellation policy applies" is not.
The cutoff is simple. State it as a clock time. "Cancel by 7pm the day before" is easier to enforce than "24 hours' notice", because nobody argues about what time the booking was.
Someone owns the decision. Charging a no-show fee should be one person's job, done the next day — not something the closing manager half-remembers. And that person should be allowed to waive it: for a regular, a genuine emergency, or a group that called to say they were running late.
A policy enforced consistently but waived with judgement earns far less resentment than one enforced rigidly, or not at all.
A template to adapt
For standard reservations:
We'll send you a reminder the day before your booking. If your plans change, please let us know by replying to the reminder or calling us — we keep a waitlist, and an early cancellation lets us offer your table to someone else.
For parties of seven or more, and Friday and Saturday evenings:
A card is needed to hold this booking. There's no charge if you cancel before 7pm the day before. If you cancel after that, or don't arrive, we'll charge $25 per person. Running late? Call us — we'll hold the table for 15 minutes.
Change the numbers and keep the shape: what triggers the fee, how much it is, the deadline as a clock time, and what to do if you're late.
Count it before you tighten it
Before adding card holds anywhere new, count your no-shows for a month by party size and by night. The pattern is usually narrower than it feels — a handful of big bookings on a couple of nights — and a narrow problem deserves a narrow fix, not a card requirement that puts off every guest.
And if the no-shows you're worried about are really missed calls — people who tried to cancel and couldn't reach you — that's a phone problem rather than a policy problem, and it's the cheaper one to fix. It's what Sonorch for restaurants is for.