How to use the Suggested Restaurant feature?

The Suggested Restaurant feature helps your group capture reservations that would otherwise be lost by redirecting guests to a sister venue when their first-choice restaurant is fully booked. This article covers how the feature works, where it appears in the booking widget, and how it now works alongside the waitlist.

1. What is the Suggested Restaurant feature?

The Suggested Restaurant feature allows your group to redirect guests to a sister venue when their first-choice restaurant is fully booked.

When a guest cannot find availability at Restaurant A, Zenchef automatically suggests Restaurant B from the same group — giving the guest a confirmed booking option rather than a dead end. This helps your group capture reservations it would otherwise lose.

The suggested venue is defined in your group settings and remains consistent across all touchpoints.

2. Where the suggestion appears in the booking widget

The Suggested Restaurant suggestion now surfaces at multiple moments in the guest booking journey, making it much easier to discover. It appears in the following situations:

1. No availability on the calendar — When a guest selects a date with no available slots, a suggestion banner for the sister venue is shown directly on the calendar view.
2. All time slots are fully booked — When a guest selects a date but all time slots are at full capacity, the suggestion is displayed alongside the unavailable slots.
3. Waitlist confirmation screen — After a guest joins the waitlist, a suggestion for the sister venue is presented as a confirmed alternative they can book immediately.
4. No availability screen — On the final dead-end screen where no availability is found, the suggestion is prominently displayed as a clear next step.

In all cases, the suggestion is designed to be clear and actionable: the guest immediately understands that a confirmed table is available at a nearby venue from the same group.

3. How it works alongside the waitlist

Previously, the Suggested Restaurant was hidden when the waitlist was active. Now, both options are presented to the guest at the same time.

When Restaurant A is fully booked but still has an open waitlist, guests see two options:

• Join the waitlist at Restaurant A (uncertain availability)
• Book a confirmed table at the suggested sister venue (guaranteed seat)

The guest chooses which option suits them best. This removes the previous conflict where the waitlist would suppress the sister venue suggestion entirely.

No action is required from your team to enable this behavior — it applies automatically when both the waitlist and the Suggested Restaurant add-on are active on your account.

4. FAQs