If you welcome dogs in some or all of your venue, your booking page can look after it for you. Guests say up front whether they’re bringing a dog, a booking with a dog is only offered the tables you’ve marked as dog friendly, and you can ask for each dog’s breed and size and have guests agree to your house rules before they book.
Turn on dog bookings
1. Open your online booking settings. In NomNom Web, click Settings at the bottom of the left-hand bar (it’s also in the account menu, top right) and choose Online Booking & Discover.
2. Click Dog bookings. It’s in the BOOKING OPTIONS list.
3. Switch on Allow dog bookings. The other options appear underneath. There’s no Save button: each change saves as you make it.
4. Choose what to ask.
- Request breed information starts off switched on. Guests bringing a dog then say how many are coming and give the breed and size of each one. Turn it off if all you need to know is that a dog is coming: a guest who says yes is then booked with one dog and asked nothing more about it.
- Maximum dogs per booking is the most dogs a guest can choose online, from 1 to 5. It only shows while Request breed information is on, because that’s when guests are asked how many.
- Ground rules is your dog policy in your own words — on a lead at all times, not on the seats, whatever suits. Click it, type your rules and click Save. Once you’ve written some, guests bringing a dog see them and have to tick I agree to the ground rules for bringing dogs before they can book. Leave it empty and there’s nothing to agree to.
In NomNom Web: Settings → Online Booking & Discover → Dog bookings. In the phone app: Settings → Online Booking & Discover → Dog bookings.
Mark your dog-friendly tables
Next, tell NomNom which tables a dog is welcome at — the bar, the terrace, the snug, wherever suits your venue.
1. Open your tables. In NomNom Web, click Configuration at the bottom of the left-hand bar (or in the account menu), choose Tables, then pick the area.
2. Click the paw. Every table has a paw in the DOG column. Click it to mark the table dog friendly, and click it again to undo. If you’d rather, click the table’s name, turn on Dog friendly (Allow guests booking with a dog to sit here) and click Save.
3. Do the same for every table a dog can sit at, in each of your areas.
If you marked any tables as dog friendly when you first set up NomNom, they’re already marked here.
In NomNom Web: Configuration → Tables → the paw in the DOG column. In the phone app: Configuration → Tables → tap a table → Dog Friendly → Save.
What guests see
On the first step of your booking page, where they choose how many are coming, guests are asked Bringing a dog? They have to answer Yes or No before they can carry on.
If they say yes, the times they’re offered come only from your dog-friendly tables, so the booking can’t land somewhere dogs aren’t allowed. When they fill in their details, they’re asked how many dogs and the breed and size of each (if you’re asking for breed information), then shown your ground rules to agree to (if you’ve written any).
If your dog-friendly tables are all taken on a date that still has room for guests without a dog, they aren’t simply told you’re full. They see Sorry, we can’t take any more dogs on this date, with a See times without a dog button, or they can try another date.
Maximum dogs per sitting
On the same Dog Bookings screen, Maximum dogs per sitting caps how many dogs can be booked in for overlapping times across your whole venue. It’s 2 until you change it. Every booking with a dog counts, including ones you’ve taken yourself, but cancelled bookings don’t. Once the cap is reached, a guest bringing a dog isn’t offered that time online; guests without a dog still are. Your team can still book a dog in. For more, see Limiting how many dogs can come at the same time.
Dogs on your bookings
A booking with a dog shows a paw beside it in your bookings list and on the chart. Open it and the Dogs section lists each dog’s breed and size.
You can add dogs to the bookings you take yourself, too. In NomNom Web, the booking form has a Dogs counter; for each dog you can add a breed if you like, and pick S, M or L for its size. In the phone app, tap the Dogs section on the booking. These only appear while Allow dog bookings is on.
In the phone app, a booking where the guest agreed to your ground rules also shows Ground rules agreed, with the date and time they ticked the box.
Events dogs aren’t suited to
If you run a formal dinner or a tasting evening where dogs wouldn’t fit in, you can stop that event’s own booking page asking about them. Open the event, turn off Bringing a dog? question, and click Save changes (Save in the phone app). The switch only shows while dog bookings are on.
This only covers bookings made through the event’s own link. Guests booking through your main booking page are still asked on the first step, before they’ve picked the event.
In NomNom Web: Configuration → Events → open the event. In the phone app: Configuration → Events → tap the event.
Show you’re dog friendly on NomNom Discover
If you’re listed on NomNom Discover, you can let people browsing it know dogs are welcome. In Settings → Online Booking & Discover, scroll down to LISTING DETAILS and turn on Show as dog friendly. Your page then carries a Dog friendly badge, and Dogs: Welcome under Good to know. If your booking link opens the same style of page, they show there too.
This is separate from dog bookings: it doesn’t ask guests anything or change which tables they’re offered.
Good to know
- No tables marked yet? Until at least one table is marked, a guest bringing a dog can book any table, just as before. Turning dog bookings on never takes times away from guests who aren’t bringing a dog.
- Once tables are marked, they’re the only ones offered with a dog. Make sure you have dog-friendly tables big enough for the parties you take: if none is big enough, that party won’t be offered a time while they’re bringing a dog.
- Table groups are marked separately. In NomNom Web, Configuration → Table groups has the same DOG column. A group is only offered to a party with a dog if the group itself is marked.
- Dog-friendly tables still need to take online bookings. A table with WEB switched off, or in an area that doesn’t take online bookings, isn’t offered online to anyone, dog or no dog.
- Marking tables does nothing on its own. It only changes what guests are offered once Allow dog bookings is on.
- Only online bookings are restricted. When you take a booking yourself, you can seat a guest with a dog wherever you judge best.
- Turning dog bookings off takes the question off your booking page and the dog options out of your booking forms. Bookings that already have dogs on them keep showing them.