Slot Capacity & Pacing

A restaurant doesn't break because it's full — it breaks because twenty covers land at the same minute. The dining room can handle volume, the kitchen cannot absorb a spike. The pass slows, tickets stack, tables sit with empty hands, and a fully-booked night turns into a badly-served night.

Slot Capacity & Pacing puts a ceiling on how many covers the booking system will accept in each time slot. Set 30 at 12:00, 30 at 12:15, 25 at 12:30. Once a slot is full, the form and every connected channel — Google, Instagram, Facebook, the embedded widget — stop offering it. Guests pick the next open slot instead. No one is turned away; the arrival curve just smooths itself out.

The rule works at two levels. A venue-wide cap throttles the total kitchen load, and per-area caps let you pace each section independently — the garden at 10 per slot, the indoor at 20, the bar at 5. Change the numbers for a lunch shift versus a Saturday dinner, or punch up the caps during a quiet Tuesday to fill seats faster.

This is the difference between a reservation system that books everyone and one that actually protects your operation.