Restaurants and pubs have two businesses running at once: the fast one at the bar and the slow one at the table. They have completely different payment problems, and the trade tends to be sold software that only understands one of them.
The fast one
Rounds at the bar, small amounts, high volume, everything on card. Same arithmetic as a café: the fee is invisible per round and substantial per year, and anything that slows service on a Friday night is a non-starter regardless of what it saves.
A tag on the bar top is about as fast as a card, and it is the same gesture. That is the only test that matters at nine o'clock on a Friday.
The slow one, where the money is
Bookings, deposits, private hire, functions, the Christmas party somebody enquired about in September.
Here the amounts are large, the commitment is asymmetrical — you hold a date, they hold nothing — and the payment problems are completely different. This is where a restaurant actually loses money, and it is almost never about card fees.
- The no-showA table of eight on a Saturday is a couple of hundred pounds of covers you turned other people away for. Multiply by the ones who never call to cancel.
- Deposits that are awkward to takeReading card details over the phone is slow, unpleasant for both parties, and half the time the number is wrong.
- The function that shrinksBooked for forty, twenty-six arrive, and the food was ordered for forty.
- Chargebacks on hospitalityNotoriously hard to defend. You served the food; proving it is somebody else's problem to disbelieve.
What a settled deposit changes
Send a booking link. They pay a deposit from their phone in seconds. It has settled — not authorised, not pending, not reversible in six weeks. It lands against the booking in your diary and against the invoice in your books.
People behave differently about money that has actually left their account. A deposit that cost them nothing to give is a deposit they will walk away from; one that settled is a reason to ring and move the date rather than simply not turn up.
You are not really selling food on a Saturday night. You are selling two hours of a table, and you cannot sell them twice.
Functions, and knowing the money is real
For a large private hire — a wedding reception, a wake, a company party — you are committing staff, stock and a closed dining room on the strength of an email.
Alongside a deposit, you can ask for proof of funds on the quote: the customer shows from their own wallet that they can cover it, and you see a straight answer without seeing their balance or anything else about them. It is not a guarantee, but for a four thousand pound function booked by somebody you have never met, it is a great deal better than hoping.
The VAT, which is worse in hospitality than anywhere
Eat-in standard-rated, cold takeaway food zero-rated, hot takeaway standard-rated, alcohol always standard-rated, a bag of coffee beans different again. A single order can carry three treatments, and the split has to be right per line at the point of sale rather than estimated at quarter end.
Service charge has its own rules. Tips distributed to staff have their own rules again, and those changed recently enough that plenty of operators are still getting it wrong.
None of this is exotic, but it is exactly the sort of thing that is either done correctly as it happens or reconstructed badly in January.
Where to start, realistically. Not at the bar. Your bar customers will pay by card for years yet and there is no point fighting it.
Start with deposits and functions, where the amounts are large, the payment is not made standing up, and the downside you are protecting against is a lost Saturday rather than twelve pence on a pint.
And the reviews
Hospitality lives and dies on them, and the trade knows better than anyone how much of it is nonsense — the competitor with five accounts, the one-star from somebody who has never been through the door, the agency selling five-star reviews by the dozen.
A review that can only be written by a customer whose payment settled fixes the specific, industrial version of that problem. Fewer reviews, all of them from people who actually ate there, and a right of reply underneath.
Bookings, deposits, the till and the VAT return in one place, with no percentage taken from any of it.