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Quick answers to the most common questions about HappyChef.
HappyChef is an all-in-one reservation and guest management platform for restaurants. It handles online bookings, your table plan, waitlists, gift cards, guest profiles and automated confirmations, so you can fill more tables with less manual work.
No. You get a hosted booking page you can share with a link, and guests can also reserve from your Google profile and social media. If you do have a website, you can embed the booking page or widget on it — see the Integration guide.
Most restaurants are live within a day. Once your opening hours, capacity and table plan are set, you can immediately accept reservations. The How-to guide walks you through each step.
Open the reservation from the reservation list or the table plan, edit the date, time, party size or table, and save. Guests are notified automatically of the change or cancellation when notifications are enabled.
Yes. Create a new reservation from the dashboard, enter the guest details and seat them on a table. Walk-ins and phone bookings count toward your capacity just like online reservations.
Capacity and table availability are checked in real time across every channel — your booking page, widget and manual entries all draw from the same live availability, so a slot can never be sold twice.
Enable automatic confirmation and reminder messages, and optionally require a credit card guarantee or deposit for selected time slots or party sizes. Reminders alone typically cut no-shows significantly.
Yes. In settings you can require a deposit or a no-show guarantee for specific shifts, days or group sizes. Guests enter their card during booking and are only charged according to your no-show policy.
Set a maximum online party size so big groups are routed to a request or contact step instead of booking instantly. You can then confirm large groups manually and combine tables in the table plan.
The table plan is a visual floor map of your restaurant. It shows which tables are free, reserved or seated in real time, and lets you drag reservations onto tables and combine tables for larger parties.
Yes. You can create separate areas — for example an indoor room, bar and terrace — each with its own tables and capacity. Availability is calculated per area and combined for your totals.
Online reservations can be auto-assigned to suitable tables based on party size and your rules, and you can always re-seat manually by dragging on the table plan. This keeps the floor balanced without micromanaging every booking.
The availability algorithm combines several of your settings at once — opening hours, total and per-area capacity, table sizes, average dining duration and your pacing rules — and only offers time slots it can actually seat. It checks, for each requested party size, whether a suitable table (or combination of tables) is free for the whole dining duration, and whether offering that slot would keep arrivals within your pacing limits.
The goal is to fill your service smoothly rather than all at once. If you want more slots to appear, you can increase capacity, shorten dining duration, relax pacing, or make more tables combinable. If service feels too rushed, do the opposite. Every change updates availability instantly across your booking page, widget and manual entries.
Pacing limits how many guests can arrive within the same window, so the kitchen and floor are not hit all at once. Smooth pacing improves the guest experience and lets you serve more covers over a shift.
Yes. You set an average dining duration (optionally per party size or shift), and the algorithm reserves the table for that long before offering it again. This prevents back-to-back bookings that overlap.
A slot is hidden when capacity for that window is full, when pacing limits are reached, when no suitable table is free for the party size, or when the shift is closed or blocked. Adjusting capacity, pacing or table setup will reopen slots.
Yes. You can sell digital gift cards that guests buy online and receive by email, and you can embed the gift card flow on your own website. See the Integration guide for the copy-paste code.
Each gift card has a unique code and QR. You scan or enter the code at the restaurant to verify and redeem it. Partial redemptions are supported, with the remaining balance kept on the card.
Take-away (pickup) lets guests buy a gift card online and collect a physical card at your restaurant at a chosen time, instead of receiving it only by email. You configure pickup windows per service in your opening hours.
Yes. You can choose from ready-made designs and add your own banner, so the gift card matches your brand. The embedded gift card flow also supports colour themes to fit your website.
Open Settings and edit your opening hours per service (breakfast, lunch, dinner). You can set different hours per weekday, add exceptions for holidays, and close specific shifts without deleting them.
HappyChef is available in 24 languages. Set your dashboard language in your profile, and the guest-facing booking page automatically follows the guest’s own language where possible.
In notification settings you control which messages go out — confirmations, reminders and review requests — and through which channel. You can tailor timing and wording to match your service.
Adjust your total covers and per-area capacity in settings, or temporarily reduce capacity for a single day (for example when you are short-staffed). Availability updates instantly across all channels.
Use the copy-paste code in the Integration guide. You can embed the full booking page in an iframe, add the floating reservation widget with a single script tag, or embed the gift card flow. Your restaurant ID is filled in automatically when you are logged in.
Integration is designed around our hosted booking page, widget and embeds — you do not need to call any server yourself. This keeps things secure and maintenance-free: we handle availability, payments and updates for you.
When you are logged in to HappyChef, the Integration guide fills your restaurant ID into every code snippet automatically. It is the same identifier used across your booking page and widget. If you are not logged in, replace YOUR_RESTAURANT_ID with your own ID.
You are billed per your plan. You can review your plan and invoices from your account, and upgrade or change at any time. See the pricing page for current plans.
Your guest data is yours. HappyChef stores it securely on your behalf and you can export it. We process it only to run the service for you, in line with GDPR.
Yes. You can export your reservations and guest profiles from the dashboard, so your data stays portable and under your control.