Frequently asked questions
What is Thezi?
A table booking system for independent restaurants. Diners book from your website, your Google listing or a link you give out, with no account and no app. You run service from a phone or tablet at the door. It is built and run from Cornwall.
What does it cost?
Nothing during early access, with every feature included and no card to enter. When early access ends it becomes a fixed monthly fee — the planned prices are on the home page. There is no commission, no per-cover charge and no charge per booking, ever.
Do diners need an account or an app?
No. They pick a day, a time and a party size, leave a name and an email, and they are booked. They get a confirmation email with a link to cancel. That is the whole thing.
What devices does it work on?
Any phone, tablet or computer with a web browser — there is nothing to install. Most venues keep a tablet or an old phone by the door for service. On an iPad or Android tablet you can add the dashboard to the home screen so it opens full-screen like an app.
What happens if the wifi drops during service?
The counter screen still opens and still shows tonight's diary and the floor plan, marked with the time it was last refreshed, and it catches up on its own when the line is back. Adding, moving or cancelling a booking needs the internet — a device that cannot check the live diary cannot promise a table is free. Diners' online bookings are unaffected; they never depend on your wifi. More on offline mode.
Can I put the booking form on my own website?
Yes, and we recommend it. It is one paste; the guides cover Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Shopify, GoDaddy and the rest. If your site cannot take code, a Book a table button linking to your booking page works everywhere.
Does it work with Google?
Your booking link goes on your Google Business Profile today, so diners can book from Search and Maps — here is how. Booking inside Google's own reserve button, without leaving Google, needs Google to accept us as a partner, which comes once enough venues are with us.
Can I charge no-shows?
Yes, if you want to. You can ask diners for a card when they book and charge a fee per person if they do not turn up. Nothing is ever charged automatically; a person at the venue presses the button. Most venues start without it. See No-show cover.
Do diners get a confirmation? Do you send text messages?
They get a confirmation email within a minute, and a cancellation email if the booking is cancelled. We do not send SMS — the cost per message does not fit a fixed monthly price — and we do not send reminders yet.
Can I take bookings over the phone?
Yes. Add a booking in your dashboard shows you the same free times a diner would see. If the caller gives an email they get the normal confirmation; if not, nothing is sent.
What if two people book the last table at the same moment?
One of them gets it and the other is told, politely, that it has just gone. This is designed in rather than fixed after the fact: every booking at your venue goes through a single queue, so two bookings for the same table cannot both succeed, and we have a test that tries to make it happen on every change.
I already use another system. Can I switch?
Run Thezi alongside it for a week or two — set it up, put the link on Google, and see which one diners use. There is nothing to unpick when you decide. If you have future bookings to bring across, send them to us as a spreadsheet and we will load them.
Is my diners' information safe?
Diners' details belong to you and are used only to run their booking. They are never shared with another venue and never used by us for marketing. What we do with the data, and what we promise you, is written down in plain terms in our data processing agreement and diner privacy notice.
Can an assistant or a piece of software make bookings for me?
Yes. Everything a person can do in the dashboard, software can do through the same door. You create a key under API keys, scoped to your venue alone, and every change it makes is recorded as made by software. Money — charges, refunds — always waits for a person. More on the software page.
How do I cancel?
Email hello@thezi.app. No notice period, no questions. Your data leaves with you.
How do I get help?
Everything we know is here in the help centre. For anything else, hello@thezi.app reaches a person, usually the same day.
Still stuck? hello@thezi.app reaches a person, usually the same day.