Peperoncino: a restaurant website with its own table booking system.

The problem: bookings lost in an inbox

Before the new site, table requests at Peperoncino arrived through a contact form plugin and landed in an email inbox. A request could sit there unread on a busy night. The guest had no idea whether the table was booked, and the team had no single list of who was coming in.

The obvious fix for most restaurants is a booking platform that takes a fee for every cover. Peperoncino wanted something simpler: its own booking system on its own website, with the guest list staying with the restaurant.

What we built

We designed and built a new website with the menu, the story of the restaurant and a gallery, so a visitor can see the food and book from the same page. The Reserve your table button sits on every screen, on a laptop and on a phone.

Behind it is a booking system we wrote as a WordPress plugin for the restaurant. It knows the opening hours, so a guest is only offered times when the kitchen is open. Times run every 15 minutes and each table is held for 90 minutes, both set by the restaurant in its settings.

How a booking works now

1. The guest picks a date, a time and the number of people, and sends the request.
2. The guest gets an email straight away saying the request has arrived.
3. The team gets the request too, and it appears on the bookings dashboard.
4. The team marks it confirmed, and the guest gets a confirmation email with a cancel button.
5. If the guest cancels, the table frees up and the team is told by email. The team can also move or cancel a booking, and the guest is emailed either way.

Every booking also adds the guest to a customer list that the restaurant keeps.

Why it matters for a restaurant

Because the system belongs to Peperoncino, there is no fee per booking and no third party between the restaurant and its guests. A guest who cannot come has a one-tap way to cancel from the confirmation email, which frees the table for someone else. And the team starts each evening from one list instead of an inbox.

We added a small Website by Digimpact link to the footer of the site, which you can follow back here.

Want the same for your restaurant?

We build restaurant websites from £300 a year with hosting, your domain and five pages included, and booking systems like this one for a fixed price agreed after a 30-minute call. Read about booking systems, our restaurant booking plugin, or how we can help you stop paying booking commission.