If you are moving to NomNom from TheFork, this is the whole job end to end. None of it is difficult, and most of it is us doing the work rather than you.
There are really only two pieces: your setup (your rooms, tables, times and services) and your data (your bookings, and the guests attached to them). They are separate jobs and they happen in different ways — one is a short session with us, the other is a file you send us and we load for you.
Get your booking data out of TheFork before you cancel anything. That is the one step with a deadline attached, and it is the one people leave too late. Everything else can be done calmly, in any order, at whatever pace suits your kitchen.
The reassuring part, first
Nothing switches off while you set up. Opening a NomNom account does not touch your TheFork account, your listing, or the bookings sitting in it. The two run side by side quite happily, and plenty of venues keep taking bookings on the old system for weeks while the team gets comfortable with the new one.
You choose the day you move over — the day your own website and your Google listing start pointing at NomNom instead. Until then, nothing your guests see has changed.
And you do not have to cancel anything to start. If you are still inside a contract you can be fully set up and running on NomNom long before that contract ends. We do not charge you while you wait it out — see What it costs while you are still in contract at the end.
What moves, and what does not
Your bookings move. Send us an export and we load your future bookings into NomNom for you, free of charge — and your past ones too, if the export includes them. You are not reopening a diary on a blank page.
Your guests come across on their bookings. Each booking arrives with the guest's name, phone number and email, so everybody due to walk through your door is there and reachable the moment the import is done.
A separate marketing list needs a word with us first. If what you have is a list of every diner you have ever served, rather than people holding a booking, send it over and we will tell you honestly what we can do with it before you count on it. That is a different job from importing bookings, and it is worth being straight about up front rather than after you have cancelled.
Your setup does not move — and it would not from any system. No booking system exports its rooms, tables, sittings and opening times in a shape another one can read. So we build it with you instead, which is about half an hour for most venues: your rooms, your tables and where they sit, your services and times, how long you give a table, and your online booking rules. We would far rather do that with you than guess at it.
Money does not move. A deposit taken through TheFork was taken by TheFork, and it stays there — settle those the way you always have. From your switch-over day, deposits and payments run through NomNom into your own Stripe account instead. If a booking you are importing already has a deposit against it, tell us and we will note it on the booking so nobody asks the guest to pay twice.
Your reviews and your marketplace listing stay with TheFork. They live on their platform rather than belonging to you, and nobody can move them across. Worth knowing now rather than discovering later.
Getting your data out
This is the only part we cannot do for you, because it needs your login.
Do it now, not at the end. Whatever your reason for leaving and whenever you plan to go, get the file out while your account is live and you can still sign in. Access to a back office usually goes the moment an account closes, and a booking history you meant to keep is a miserable thing to lose on a technicality. Export it, save it somewhere safe, and then take your time over everything else.
Look for an export, download or reports option in your TheFork back office and take whatever it will give you — bookings, customers, or both. A CSV or Excel file is ideal.
If you cannot find one, ask their support directly for an export of your bookings and your customer list. Ask in writing, keep the reply, and ask early enough that a slow answer does not turn into a problem. Your guests' details are your own business records as much as anybody's, and a polite written request is usually all it takes.
Whatever you end up with, send it to us exactly as it came. Please do not spend an evening tidying it into the shape you think we need — we would rather see the original and do the tidying at our end. A hand-edited file is harder for us to work with, not easier, and it is easy to lose a column without noticing.
What happens once we have the file
We do the import. There is nothing for you to upload and nothing to configure.
We will tell you what came across before you rely on it: how many bookings, over what dates, and anything in the file we could not make sense of. Pick out a handful of bookings you remember and check they read right.
Table numbers are the one thing to expect to redo. Your old system's tables are its own names and numbers rather than yours, so imported bookings arrive without a table on them. Once your floor plan is set up you can seat them, and for most venues that is a quiet half hour rather than a job.
Importing twice is safe. This matters more than it sounds. Bookings keep arriving on the old system right up to your switch-over day, so the usual pattern is to import once early, so you can get set up and have a look around, then send a fresh export a day or two before you move across. The second import updates the bookings we already hold and adds the new ones. It does not duplicate anything.
A sensible order to do it in
- Open your NomNom account and tell us you are coming from TheFork.
- Get your export out of TheFork while you have access. Do this early even if your move is months away.
- We build your setup with you — rooms, tables, times and services. About half an hour.
- We import your bookings, and you have a look through them.
- Take bookings on both systems for as long as your team wants. There is no rush at this step at all.
- Move your own channels over: the booking button on your website, and your Google listing.
- Send us a final export a day or two later, so nothing booked in the meantime is missed.
- Then cancel TheFork, giving whatever notice your contract asks for. Check the notice period before this step rather than after — annual terms often renew automatically, and the notice is usually owed months ahead.
Where your bookings come from afterwards
This is the question worth thinking hardest about, and we would rather you thought it through before you move than after.
On NomNom your bookings come from your own booking page, from your own website, from your Google listing, and from the phone and the front door as they always did. None of them carries a commission — not on the party size, not on the deposit, and not on the same guest coming back for the fourth time.
What you give up is the marketplace listing: diners browsing TheFork who find you there. Only you can judge what that is worth, and it deserves judging on a real figure rather than a feeling. Before you decide, look back over a few months and work out what share of your covers genuinely arrived through their marketplace, as against guests who were always coming to you and simply booked through whichever button you put in front of them. Those first ones are the covers you are paying commission on. Venues are often surprised by that number in one direction or the other — and either way you will have made the decision on your own figures.
If you would like your Google listing taking bookings directly, tell us and we will set that up with you.
What it costs while you are still in contract
If you are tied into TheFork until some date in the future, we wait it out. NomNom is free for however many months you have left, up to twelve. Not a discount — free. You start paying us on the day your old contract would have ended anyway.
After that it is £29.99 a month per venue plus VAT: rolling monthly, no commission, no contract and no exit fee. Tell us your renewal date and we will confirm your free period in writing before you move anything.
If you get stuck
If anything here is unclear, or your export is not giving you what you expected, get in touch. We have done this move before, and we would much rather answer a question early than untangle something afterwards.