For 34 years, Wagamama's answer to "can I book?" was no. Turn up, queue, sit on a bench, eat. It was part of the brand. This month the chain changed it: Restaurant Online reports that Wagamama is now taking same-day and advance bookings for the first time in its history, following a trial and, the company says, customer demand for more flexibility.
You are probably not running 170-odd restaurants. But if your venue is walk-in only, or books by phone and a notebook, the reasoning behind that decision applies to you too.
What Wagamama actually changed
The facts, as reported, are simple. Tables can now be booked same-day or in advance. Bookings are available through OpenTable, the Wagamama website and its app, and larger groups can also book by phone. The communal benches stay. What changed is that guests who like to plan no longer have to gamble on a queue.
Everything that follows in this post is our own reading of what that means for independent venues, not something Wagamama has said.
The quiet cost of being walk-in only
Walk-in only works well when your name, your location and your queue do the selling. It works less well in the situations below, none of which show up on a daily takings figure.
A group choosing a venue for Friday night will often pick one it can book. If yours cannot be booked, it may never make the shortlist, however good the food is.
Without bookings it is hard to spread demand. Guests arrive when they arrive, so the room can sit half empty at six and have a queue at eight.
Six or more people rarely want to find out on the day whether a table exists. A venue that can say "yes, Thursday at seven" wins that booking over one that says "just turn up".
A walk-in who sees a queue and leaves is invisible. A booking enquiry you could not take at least leaves a trace you can learn from.
The fear is usually that bookings will eat the room. In practice you decide how many tables are bookable and how many stay open for whoever walks in. The risk is not bookings. It is having no clear picture of which tables are which.
What helps, and what doesn't
There is no setting that decides the right balance for you. That depends on your room, your trade and your regulars. What the right system does is let you run both kinds of guest from one view, and spot problems early. These are the relevant parts of HDS Cloud Apps.
Table Reservations lets you take bookings directly through the platform and manage walk-ins alongside advance bookings, so front-of-house is not juggling a diary and a floor plan separately.
If you want a booking channel guests already know, bookings made on OpenTable flow into your reservation manager in real time, pre-populate covers on your floor plan and alert front-of-house ahead of arrival. See the full module list.
The till shows each table's status in real time, with open time, guest count and running total, so staff can see at a glance which tables are free for walk-ins and which are about to turn.
Automated confirmation and reminder emails reduce forgotten bookings, and optional deposit rules let you protect busy nights or large groups without asking every guest for money.
Seeing which bookings fall through, and when, is how you decide whether you need a deposit, a reminder or nothing at all.
"The question isn't booking or walk-in. It's whether you can see the whole room at once."
A sensible way to start
You do not have to switch overnight. Wagamama itself ran a trial first, and the same approach suits an independent.
Open bookings for the sessions where you already turn people away or queue, usually Friday and Saturday evenings, and leave quiet sessions as they are.
Decide how many tables stay unbooked. Starting with a larger walk-in share and reducing it as you learn is safer than the reverse.
Wagamama routes bigger parties to a call. You might ask for a deposit above a certain size, or take large groups by phone only. Write it down so every member of staff gives the same answer.
Look at no-shows, empty tables and walk-ins turned away. Adjust the split, the deposit rule or the booking hours, then repeat.
Is it worth doing?
If your venue is full on its own, you may not need to change anything. If you are queueing at peak and quiet either side, losing groups to venues that can say yes in advance, or simply have no idea how many people you turn away, bookings are worth a controlled trial. When a chain built on first-come, first-served decides the model needs to flex, it is a fair prompt to ask whether yours does too.
If you would like to see bookings and walk-ins running from one floor plan, book a demo and we will show you live.