The day's waitlist: who is waiting, what they would take, and what you have already offered.
It is a Tuesday and the phone goes at half six. A table for two, tonight, around seven. You are full. You say the thing you always say — sorry, we are fully booked this evening — and you mean it kindly, and they say no problem, and that is that.
Then at ten past eight, a four-top cancels.
Somewhere in the last hour and a half you had someone who wanted exactly this. You might even remember their name. More likely it went on the corner of the diary, or the back of a docket that is now in somebody's apron pocket, and the moment has quietly gone. The table goes out empty on a night you turned people away.
A list that stays where you can see it
NomNom now keeps a waitlist for every day. When you cannot seat someone, you put them on it: a name, a way to reach them, how many are coming, and whether they would take any time that day or only a particular window. If they mentioned a room or a sitting, that goes on too. If they did not, nothing is invented on their behalf — a blank means anything, not unknown.
You will find it in the More menu on NomNom Web, and in the menu on the phone app. Each party carries its own state, so a glance tells you who is still waiting, who has been offered something, and who has already turned into a booking.
When something frees up, you decide who gets it
A cancellation comes in. You open the list, pick the party the table actually suits, and press Offer a table. You choose the time you can genuinely seat them — not the time they originally asked for, the time you have — and NomNom does two things: it emails the guest a link, and it hands you the same link so you can read it down the phone or drop it into a text.
Nothing leaves the building on its own. No guest is contacted because a rule fired somewhere at two in the morning, and no table is given away while your back is turned. The list surfaces who is waiting; the decision stays yours, every time.
What the guest opens: one page, one button, and a time to confirm by.
One page, one button
The guest gets a page with their name on it, the time you are offering, how many it is for, and a single button. No account, no password, no app. They press Confirm this table and it becomes a real booking on your sheet — left unallocated, so your floor plan places it like any other.
If they do nothing, nothing happens. The table is still yours to give to somebody else.
The link stops working, and that is the point
Every offer carries a deadline — half an hour, unless your venue is set up differently. Once the guest has claimed it, or once the time is up, the link stops working. It is single-use by design.
That is what stops the worst version of this: the same table quietly promised to two people, and a conversation at the door you would rather never have. While an offer is live, the party it belongs to shows the deadline on the row, and the option to offer them a table again is simply not there.
In the order they asked
The list runs first come, first served. Not biggest party first, not best fit, not whoever spends the most — the order people asked. It is a suggestion rather than a rule, since you can offer a table to anyone on the list, but it means the honest answer to why did they get it and we didn't? is always available to you: they asked first.
The same list on the phone, for when you are on the floor rather than at the pass.
It is a small thing, most nights
Most nights the waitlist does nothing at all. Then a party of six cancels at seven on a Saturday, and the difference between a full room and two empty tables is whether anyone can remember who rang on Thursday.
If you already take bookings through NomNom, the waitlist is simply there, on the same screens you use now. And if you would rather keep the diary and the docket — plenty of rooms run beautifully that way — nothing changes for you either.