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Quandoo is closing. What to do before 30 September

Quandoo announced on 24 March 2026 that it would cease operations "in a planned and orderly manner". The last day a diner can make a new reservation is 30 September 2026. On 1 October you can no longer take or manage bookings through it, and on 31 December the website, app and everything behind them are switched off for good.

If your restaurant is on Quandoo, four things need to happen before the end of September, and one of them is not obvious. This page is the list.

The dates, plainly

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Reservations already confirmed will still be honoured — diners are being told to keep their confirmations, and your table is still booked. But from 1 October you cannot manage them inside Quandoo. So every booking in your diary dated October or later needs to exist somewhere that will still be working when the party arrives.

Four things to do this week

1. Get your data out, now rather than in December. Guest names, contact details, booking history, notes. Quandoo's support team is helping partners export before the shutdown — ask for everything, and ask what format it comes in. After 31 December there is nothing to ask.

One thing worth being careful about: a guest list moves with obligations attached. You were the one who collected those diners' details, so you can keep using them — but your own privacy notice has to cover it, and anyone who consented to marketing from Quandoo did not thereby consent to marketing from you. Import the booking history. Be careful with the mailing list.

2. Copy every future booking somewhere you control. Anything dated 1 October onwards currently exists in Quandoo's diary and nowhere else. A spreadsheet is fine. Your new system is better.

3. Have a replacement live before 30 September, not after. Point new bookings at it now and let the Quandoo ones age out. Running both for a fortnight is much easier than switching over on a Tuesday night with a full book.

4. Change every link that points at Quandoo. This is the one people miss, and it costs covers silently:

• the Book button on your own website
• the reservation link on your Google Business Profile — this is the one that matters most, because it is where people who search your name click
• your Instagram and Facebook links
• TripAdvisor, any local guide listing, your email footer
• printed QR codes on tables and in windows

A dead booking link does not announce itself. Nobody rings to tell you the button did not work; they just go somewhere else.

Where your Quandoo bookings actually came from

Worth being honest about, because it decides what you should replace it with.

Quandoo did two different jobs. It took bookings for you — the form, the diary, the confirmation email. And for some restaurants it also found diners, through its own app and website, in exchange for a fee on those covers.

Any booking system replaces the first job. Nothing replaces the second in the same shape, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. If you want a marketplace, the two big ones are TheFork and OpenTable, and the trade is the same one Quandoo offered: they bring some covers, you pay for each of them.

What is easy to overlook is that the cheapest discovery channel is not a marketplace at all. It is your Google Business Profile — free, already exists, and it is what appears when somebody searches your restaurant by name or looks for somewhere to eat in your town. A booking link on it turns that into a reservation without a commission. Most independent restaurants are under-using it, and the ones that were leaning on Quandoo for discovery are the ones with the most to gain. We wrote the steps down: getting your booking link onto Google.

What to ask a replacement before you sign

You have just been through the worst version of platform risk. It is a good moment to ask harder questions than you did last time.

• Is there a per-cover fee, and on which bookings? Some systems charge nothing on bookings from your own website and a fee on bookings from their marketplace. That is a fair trade, but you need to know which is which.
• How long is the contract, and what notice? Twelve months with 90 days' notice is common. Rolling monthly exists.
• Can you export your guest list whenever you like, in a format you can open? You now know exactly why this matters.
• Who is the data controller? It should be you. The system processes on your behalf.
• Does it actually work on the phone behind the bar, one-handed, on bad wifi? Ask for a trial you can run during a service, not a demo call.
• What happens to card details if you take them for no-show cover, and who can charge them.

The UK options, and what they cost

September 2026. Only some of these publish a price at all, which is itself worth knowing before you book a sales call.

Scroll the table sideways.

The longer version of that table, and the arithmetic that led us to £20, is on what a booking system should cost. If your Quandoo bill included a fee per cover, the cover fee calculator will tell you what that was actually costing you a year.

Thezi, and what it is not

We are one of the options above, so read this knowing that.

What it does. A booking page in your own colours, on your own website or its own address. A floor plan of your room that shows you who is sitting where. Card holds for no-show cover, charged only when you decide. A guest list you can export whenever you like. £0 during early access, £20 a month planned after that, and no commission and no per-cover charge — not on any booking, ever.

What it is not. There is no Thezi app for diners and no marketplace, so it brings you no covers of its own. There are no text reminders yet, only email. The in-Google "Reserve a table" button is not live yet either, though your own Google Business Profile link works today and is most of the value. And Thezi is new — we are building it with our first venues right now, which is why it is free and why you get the people making it on the other end of an email.

If a fortnight is all you have, that is enough time to set it up. Start free — no card, no call.

Common questions

Will my existing Quandoo bookings still happen?

Yes. Reservations already confirmed through Quandoo will be honoured, and diners have been told to keep their confirmations. What stops on 1 October is your ability to see and manage them inside Quandoo, so copy anything dated October or later into your new system or a spreadsheet before then.

Can I still get my guest data out after 30 September?

Quandoo's support team is helping partners export their data before the final shutdown on 31 December 2026, so there is a window after bookings stop. Do not rely on it. Export now, check the file opens, and keep a copy somewhere that is not a platform being wound down.

Do I need to tell diners that Quandoo is closing?

You do not have to, but it helps. Anyone who booked through Quandoo will keep their table; the thing worth telling your regulars is where to book next time. An email to your list, a note on your website and an updated link on your Google profile covers almost everybody.

What is the cheapest way to replace Quandoo?

If you only need to take bookings on your own website, a flat monthly fee with no per-cover charge is the cheapest shape, and the published UK prices start at £0 to about £30 a month. If you were relying on Quandoo's marketplace for discovery, the honest cheapest replacement is not a paid marketplace at all — it is a booking link on your Google Business Profile, which costs nothing.

Is there a free alternative to Quandoo?

There are two kinds of free. resOS has a free tier capped at a number of bookings a month. Thezi is free with no cap while it is in early access, because it is new and being built with its first venues — the planned price afterwards is £20 a month. Read a "free" plan's cap before you move your diary onto it.

Why did Quandoo close?

Quandoo said it decided to cease operations in a planned and orderly manner, following a strategic portfolio review by its parent company, Recruit Holdings. No further business rationale was given publicly.

Sources

• An Important Update on Quandoo Services — Quandoo's own notice, with the dates
• Quandoo to shut restaurant booking platform by end of 2026 — Verdict Foodservice, March 2026

Written 2026-09-12, last checked 2026-09-12. Prices and terms change and most of these companies do not publish theirs — check before you sign. Something wrong here? hello@thezi.app reaches a person.

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