Bistrochat FAQ: Everything Restaurant Owners Need to Know About Our Reservation System
Whether you're running a neighbourhood dim sum spot in Hong Kong, a rooftop bar in Bangkok, a beach club in Bali, or a multi-concept restaurant group spanning Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, finding the right reservation system is one of the most important operational decisions you'll make. We get asked a lot of questions — and we love that. It means operators are doing their homework before they commit. So we've pulled together the most common questions we hear, and answered every single one of them honestly.
Getting Started
1. How long does it take to set up bistrochat for my restaurant?
Most restaurants are fully up and running on bistrochat within a single day. Once you get started, our onboarding team works with you to configure your floor plan, set your service periods and time slots, define your booking rules, and test everything before you go live. There's no lengthy IT project, no third-party consultants, and no weeks-long rollout. If you're a single venue with a straightforward setup, you could realistically take your first booking by end of day. For multi-venue groups with more complex configurations, we'll set a realistic timeline together — but it's always faster than you'd expect.
2. Do I need to be tech-savvy to use bistrochat?
Not at all. bistrochat was designed specifically for people who run restaurants, not for people who run software companies. The interface is clean, intuitive, and built around the way a hospitality team actually thinks — by service, by section, by cover count. You don't need a background in technology to navigate it. Your floor manager, your reservations team, even your front-of-house staff can learn the basics in under an hour. If anything ever trips you up, our support team is available and will walk you through it step by step.
3. Is there a free trial or demo available for bistrochat?
Yes. We offer a live demo where one of our team members walks you through the platform using a real restaurant setup — not a slideshow, not a PDF, but the actual product. You'll see exactly how bookings come in, how the floor plan works, how the guest database builds itself over time, and how your team would manage a busy service. We'd rather show you than tell you. To book a demo, get in touch with us directly and we'll schedule a session that fits your timeline.
4. What types of restaurants is bistrochat best suited for?
bistrochat works for a wide range of hospitality concepts — from intimate fine dining rooms and casual neighbourhood restaurants to beach clubs, rooftop bars, private members' clubs, and large restaurant groups with multiple venues. What all of these have in common is that they care about the guest experience and need more control over their reservations than a phone book or a basic online form can offer. If you're managing more than a handful of covers a night and you want to know who's coming, when, and what they expect — bistrochat was built for you.
5. How is bistrochat different from other restaurant reservation systems?
A few things set us apart. First, we were built for the Southeast Asian hospitality market — which means the product reflects how dining actually works here, from local payment gateway integrations to WhatsApp confirmations to connections with the discovery platforms your guests actually use, like OpenRice and Dianping. Second, we don't charge per cover. You pay a flat subscription, and every booking you take is yours. Third, we built the platform with operators in mind, not just tech users — the interface is straightforward, onboarding is fast, and our support team actually picks up the phone. We're also continuing to expand our integration ecosystem with the tools that matter most to operators across the region.
Pricing & Plans
6. How much does bistrochat cost?
bistrochat runs on a subscription model, with plans tiered to match the size and needs of your operation — whether you're a single venue or a multi-concept restaurant group. We don't publish a one-size-fits-all price because the right plan genuinely depends on your setup. What we can tell you is that there are no per-cover fees, no booking commissions, and no surprise charges at the end of the month. Get in touch with our team for a tailored quote, and we'll make sure you're on a plan that makes sense for your business.
7. Are there hidden fees or per-cover charges with bistrochat?
No. This is something we feel strongly about. Many reservation platforms take a cut of every booking — a fee per cover, per reservation, or per transaction. We don't do that. bistrochat is a flat subscription. Every table you fill, every reservation you take, every returning guest you welcome back — none of that costs you extra. The price you agree to is the price you pay. For restaurants doing serious volume, that difference adds up to a significant saving over the course of a year.
8. Can I manage multiple restaurants from one bistrochat account?
Yes. bistrochat has a multi-venue dashboard that lets you oversee all your properties from a single login. You can check real-time occupancy across locations, review upcoming bookings, pull reports for each venue, and manage settings without having to log in and out of separate accounts. For restaurant groups operating across several cities or countries in the region — say, Singapore and Jakarta, or Hong Kong and Macau — this kind of centralised visibility is a genuine operational advantage. Your team at each location sees only what's relevant to them, while you see everything.
9. Can each restaurant in my group keep its own separate settings and branding?
Absolutely. While you have centralised oversight at the group level, each individual venue operates independently within bistrochat. Every restaurant can have its own floor plan, its own booking rules, its own service periods, its own widget design, and its own guest communications. Two restaurants in the same group can operate completely differently — one formal fine dining with long dining times and strict confirmation flows, one casual concept with walk-in friendly settings — and bistrochat handles both without any conflict.
Core Features
10. Can guests book a table online 24/7 without calling the restaurant?
Yes, and this is one of the biggest immediate wins our clients notice. bistrochat's booking widget is live around the clock. A guest who decides at 11pm on a Tuesday that they want to book Saturday dinner can do it right then — no waiting for the restaurant to open, no holding music, no missed call. The booking goes straight into your system, the guest gets an instant confirmation, and your team sees it when they arrive for their shift the next morning. For guests who prefer calling, your team can still log those bookings manually. Both paths feed into the same system.
11. Can I create a digital floor plan of my restaurant inside bistrochat?
Yes. bistrochat includes a visual floor plan builder where you can recreate the layout of your dining room — tables, sections, capacities, and zones — exactly as they exist in real life. Once your floor plan is live, the system uses it to assign tables intelligently, manage turn times, and prevent overbooking. Your host or manager sees the same floor they're standing on, just on a screen. You can set up multiple rooms, separate indoor and outdoor areas, and even configure different rules per section. It makes the seating process significantly more efficient, especially on busy nights.
12. Does bistrochat have a waitlist feature with automated guest notifications?
Yes. When a service is fully booked, bistrochat can add guests to a digital waitlist rather than turning them away outright. When a cancellation comes in or a table becomes available, the system automatically sends the next guest in the queue an SMS or WhatsApp message letting them know their table is ready. This keeps the guest engaged, reduces the number of empty tables due to no-shows, and takes a lot of pressure off your front-of-house team on a busy night. It's a small feature with a surprisingly large impact on both revenue and guest satisfaction.
13. Can I set different booking rules for lunch service versus dinner service?
Yes, and this level of flexibility is something operators genuinely appreciate. You can configure bistrochat differently for every service period — different time slots, different booking windows, different dining durations, different capacity limits, even different deposit requirements if you want. A restaurant that runs a fast-paced lunch and a relaxed dinner can treat those services completely separately within the system. You can also set rules specific to certain days — a Friday evening might have stricter settings than a Tuesday lunch. The system is built around the reality of how hospitality businesses actually operate.
14. Can I block off dates or manage private events and full buyouts through bistrochat?
Yes. bistrochat includes an event management module that lets you block out specific dates, times, or sections for private dining, buyouts, or special events. You can close bookings for part of the restaurant while keeping the rest open to the public, or shut down all online reservations for a specific date entirely. You can also set up private event bookings with their own flow — custom confirmation emails, deposit requirements, and dedicated notes fields for event-specific information. For restaurants that do a significant volume of private dining and corporate events, this feature alone can save hours of manual coordination every week.
15. Does bistrochat keep a guest database with preferences, allergies, and visit history?
Yes. Every time a guest makes a booking, bistrochat builds their profile in the background — visit count, dining frequency, preferences, dietary requirements, special occasions, and any notes your team adds over time. The next time that guest books, their full history is visible at the point of reservation. Your team knows before the guest arrives that they're a regular, that they prefer the corner table, that they have a nut allergy, and that they were in last month for a birthday. That kind of personalised service is what turns a good guest experience into a loyal one — and it happens automatically, without your team having to maintain a spreadsheet.
16. Can I manage special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries through bistrochat?
Yes. Guests can flag special occasions when they book, and your team receives that information clearly ahead of service. bistrochat can also be configured to automatically flag upcoming birthdays or anniversaries for returning guests in your database, so your team can prepare in advance — whether that means arranging a cake, decorating a table, or simply making sure the right person is on that section that evening. Occasion dining is a significant part of the business across Southeast Asia, and this kind of proactive detail management makes a real difference to both the guest and your team.
17. Can I send marketing messages or promotional campaigns to my guest database?
Yes. bistrochat includes a broadcast feature that lets you send SMS or email campaigns to guests who have opted in to receive communications from you. You can promote new menus, seasonal events, quiet periods you want to fill, or exclusive offers for your most loyal guests. Because the messaging goes out to people who have already dined with you, the engagement rates are typically much higher than standard marketing campaigns. It's not a full marketing automation platform, but it gives you a direct, owned channel to your existing customer base — which is one of the most valuable assets any restaurant has.
18. Can bistrochat help me collect guest reviews after their visit?
Yes. bistrochat can send automated post-visit messages to guests asking them to leave a review — on Google, on your preferred platform, or through an internal feedback form. These messages go out a few hours after service ends, when the experience is still fresh. Collecting reviews systematically rather than hoping guests remember to write one on their own is one of the most effective things a restaurant can do to build its online reputation. For operators in competitive markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, or Bangkok where review scores directly influence discovery, this feature has a measurable impact on how often new guests find you.
19. Can I set different dining durations depending on the size of the party?
Yes. This is one of those features that sounds like a small detail until you think about how much it matters in practice. A table for two at your restaurant might need 75 minutes. A table for eight needs closer to two hours. bistrochat lets you define different turn times based on party size, so the system never double-books a large table too tightly or leaves a four-top blocked out for longer than necessary. You can also override these rules manually for specific bookings when needed. The result is a floor that moves more efficiently, more revenue per service period, and fewer moments where your team has to awkwardly hover near a table because the next booking has arrived.
20. Can I set minimum and maximum party sizes per time slot or per table?
Yes. You can configure bistrochat to only accept bookings within certain party size ranges for specific times, tables, or sections. A chef's table that seats a maximum of six, a private room with a minimum of ten, a bar counter that only accommodates walk-ins for parties of one or two — all of these rules can be built into the system. This prevents the kind of mismatched bookings that create awkward situations for both the guest and your team, and it ensures that your physical space is always being used in the way you actually intend.
21. Can I manage multiple seating areas — such as indoor, outdoor, terrace, and private room — separately?
Yes. bistrochat supports multi-section floor plans, so you can configure and manage your indoor dining room, outdoor terrace, private dining room, bar area, and any other distinct zones entirely independently. Each section can have its own capacity, its own booking rules, its own availability settings, and even its own pricing for events. Guests can be directed to a specific section at the time of booking — "I'd like the terrace, please" — and your team can see at a glance which areas are filling up and which still have availability. For venues in Thailand, Vietnam, or Indonesia where outdoor and open-air dining are central to the concept, this level of control is essential.
22. Does bistrochat support pre-orders or pre-set menus for large group bookings?
Yes. For group bookings and private dining, bistrochat allows you to attach specific menu options or pre-order requirements to a reservation. Guests can be prompted to select from a set menu ahead of their visit, which gives your kitchen team advance notice and reduces service complexity on the night. This feature is particularly useful for operators who run prix-fixe dinners, event nights, or corporate dining where the kitchen needs to prepare at scale without the uncertainty of à-la-carte ordering. It also adds a layer of commitment to large bookings, which tends to reduce no-shows.
23. Can I require a deposit or credit card guarantee at the time of booking to reduce no-shows?
Yes. bistrochat supports deposit collection and credit card guarantees at the time of booking. You can configure this for specific services, party sizes, or occasions — so a Saturday night booking for six or more might require a deposit, while a Tuesday lunch for two doesn't. Guests complete the payment or card authorisation as part of the booking flow, and the whole process is handled securely. The impact on no-shows is significant — when guests have put money down, they either show up or cancel in advance, both of which are far better outcomes than a silent no-show on a busy night.
Platform & Discovery Integrations
24. Does bistrochat integrate with my existing POS system?
Yes. bistrochat integrates with a range of widely-used POS systems, so your reservation data and your point-of-sale data can talk to each other. When a reservation converts to a seated guest, your POS can see the booking details — party size, preferences, occasion notes — without your team needing to manually re-enter anything. This reduces errors, speeds up table management, and gives your floor team better information at the moment they need it. If you're using a POS system and want to know whether we support it specifically, reach out to our team and we can confirm compatibility or discuss integration options.
25. Can customers book directly from my Google Maps listing using bistrochat?
Yes. bistrochat supports Google Reserve, which means guests can book a table directly from your Google Maps listing or Google Search result — without ever visiting your website. As more diners across Southeast Asia search for restaurants on Google and expect to be able to act immediately, having a "Reserve a table" button directly on your listing removes a significant amount of friction from the booking journey. All reservations made through Google come straight into your bistrochat dashboard alongside bookings from every other channel, so there's no separate inbox to manage.
26. Does bistrochat connect to OpenRice or Dianping so I can receive reservations from those platforms directly?
Yes. bistrochat is connected to OpenRice and Dianping, two of the most important dining discovery platforms in Asia. OpenRice is the go-to platform for restaurant discovery in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and across Southeast Asia. Dianping is dominant among Chinese-speaking dining communities and heavily used by Mainland Chinese visitors and residents across the region. Restaurants listed on these platforms can receive reservation requests directly through bistrochat, which means you're not managing a separate inbox for each source. Everything — whether a booking comes from OpenRice, Dianping, Google, your own website, or a phone call logged by your team — lands in one unified dashboard.
27. Is bistrochat connected to the Michelin Guide so Michelin-listed restaurants can manage guide-sourced reservations in one place?
Yes. For restaurants that carry Michelin recognition — and the Michelin Guide has a significant and growing presence across Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Bangkok, and beyond — bistrochat can integrate with the guide's reservation flow, allowing diners who discover you through Michelin to book directly. A booking made through the Michelin Guide arrives in the same system as every other reservation, with all the same tools available to your team. For operators who have earned their Michelin distinction, the guest experience needs to be seamless all the way from discovery to arrival — a fragmented booking process undermines the quality signal that the recognition projects.
28. If I receive bookings from multiple platforms at the same time, does bistrochat prevent double-booking?
Yes. This is one of the most important things a modern reservation system needs to get right, and bistrochat handles it in real time. Whether a booking comes in through your website widget, Google Reserve, OpenRice, Dianping, Michelin, or a direct phone call logged by your team, the system checks availability against your actual live capacity before confirming anything. As soon as a slot is taken, it's no longer available on any channel simultaneously. You will never end up with two bookings for the same table at the same time because one came from Google and another from your website. The inventory is shared, live, and accurate across every source.
Marketing & CRM Integrations
29. Does bistrochat send automated booking confirmations via WhatsApp?
Yes. Across Southeast Asia, WhatsApp is where communication actually happens — and bistrochat's automated confirmations and reminders meet guests where they are. Open rates on WhatsApp messages far exceed those of email, which translates directly to fewer forgotten bookings and fewer no-shows. Confirmations go out immediately when a booking is made, and reminders can be configured to go out the day before or on the morning of the reservation. Your team doesn't need to manually send any of this — it's all automated and personalised with the guest's name, date, time, and party size.
30. Can I embed a bistrochat booking widget on my restaurant's website?
Yes. bistrochat provides an embeddable booking widget that you can drop onto your restaurant's website with minimal technical effort — usually a single line of code that your web developer or even a technically-minded team member can add. Once it's live, guests can check availability and complete a booking without leaving your website. This keeps the experience on-brand and means you're capturing demand directly rather than sending guests to a third-party booking platform. The widget works on mobile and desktop, and it updates in real time based on your live availability settings.
31. Can I customise the booking widget to match my restaurant's brand and colours?
Yes. The bistrochat booking widget is fully customisable in terms of colour scheme, button styling, and font choices, so it looks and feels like a natural part of your website rather than a generic third-party tool dropped in from elsewhere. For restaurants where brand presentation matters — and across the region's competitive dining scenes, that's most of them — this is important. A booking experience that feels consistent with your visual identity reinforces the quality signal you've worked hard to build. You don't need a developer to make these changes; they can all be managed through your bistrochat settings panel.
32. Does bistrochat integrate with Mailchimp or other email marketing tools so I can sync my guest list automatically?
Yes. bistrochat integrates with Mailchimp and other email marketing platforms, which means the guest database you build through your reservations can feed directly into your marketing lists without any manual exporting or importing. When a guest dines with you and opts in to communications, they can automatically appear in the right Mailchimp audience, ready to receive your next campaign. This closes the loop between your reservation system and your marketing stack, ensuring that the rich guest data you're collecting — visit frequency, occasion history, preferences — can actually inform how you communicate with your guests beyond the booking itself.
Payment Integrations
33. Which payment gateways does bistrochat support for taking deposits or prepayments?
bistrochat supports a growing range of payment gateways to cover the needs of operators across Southeast Asia and Greater China. This includes globally recognised processors as well as regional solutions that are preferred or required in specific markets. The ability to collect deposits, prepayments, or credit card guarantees at the time of booking is increasingly important for operators dealing with no-shows, and we've built our payment integrations to make that process as smooth as possible for both the restaurant and the guest. For a full and current list of supported gateways, our team can confirm which ones are available in your specific market.
34. Does bistrochat integrate with Stripe for online deposit collection?
Yes. bistrochat integrates with Stripe, which is one of the most widely used and developer-friendly payment processors available across the region. Through this integration, restaurants can collect deposits, prepayments, or credit card authorisations directly within the booking flow — no redirect to a separate payment page, no friction, no drop-off. The payment experience is embedded and secure, and funds are managed through your Stripe account with the same reporting and reconciliation tools you'd expect. For operators who already use Stripe elsewhere in their business, connecting it to bistrochat is straightforward.
35. Can I use local payment solutions like Qlub, Maya, or Xendit with bistrochat for in-region transactions?
Yes. We understand that global payment processors don't always cover every scenario in every market, which is why bistrochat supports regional payment solutions including Qlub, Maya, and Xendit. Xendit is a leading payment infrastructure provider across Indonesia and the Philippines, with strong adoption across the broader Southeast Asia region. Maya is widely used in the Philippines for both consumer and business payments. Qlub is an increasingly popular payment solution for restaurants across the region, enabling seamless table-side payment experiences. If your guests and your banking relationships are local, it makes sense for your payment processing to be local too — and bistrochat is built to support that.
36. Does bistrochat work with GlobalPayments or other enterprise payment processors for larger restaurant groups?
Yes. For multi-venue restaurant groups and enterprise operators who have existing relationships with enterprise-grade payment processors like GlobalPayments, bistrochat can work within that ecosystem. Larger groups often have centralised finance and treasury requirements that make it impractical to switch payment processors just because they're adopting a new reservation system. We take that seriously, and our integrations reflect it. If you're evaluating bistrochat for a multi-venue rollout and your group has specific payment processing requirements, we'd encourage you to raise those in your demo so we can walk you through exactly how it works.
Regional & Reliability
37. Which countries does bistrochat operate in?
bistrochat currently operates across Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, and the Philippines. The platform was built for the hospitality landscape of Southeast Asia and Greater China — not adapted from a Western product and retrofitted. That means the product reflects how restaurants actually operate across the region: the diversity of dining cultures, the importance of discovery platforms like OpenRice and Dianping, the role of WhatsApp in guest communication, and the range of payment infrastructure across different markets. If you're based in a country not listed here and want to explore whether bistrochat could work for you, get in touch — we're growing.
38. Is my restaurant's customer data secure with bistrochat?
Yes. Data security is something we take seriously, both because it's the right thing to do and because data privacy regulation is tightening across our operating markets — from Singapore's PDPA to Thailand's PDPA, Vietnam's data protection decrees, and Indonesia's PDP Law. Your guest data is stored securely and is not shared with third parties. Access is controlled at the user level so your team members only see what's relevant to their role. We follow industry-standard security practices for data encryption, access management, and system architecture. If you're a larger operator with specific compliance requirements, our team can walk you through our data handling practices in detail.
39. I already take reservations through Instagram DMs — why do I need bistrochat?
This is one of the most honest questions we get, and it deserves an honest answer. Instagram DMs work — until they don't. When your restaurant is quiet, managing bookings through direct messages is manageable. But as your profile grows, DMs become a genuine operational hazard: messages get missed, double-bookings happen because there's no central inventory, there's no way for your team to see the full picture at once, and every confirmation has to be written manually. More importantly, you're building zero guest data. You don't know who your regulars are, when they last visited, or how to reach them outside of Instagram. bistrochat doesn't ask you to stop using Instagram — it asks you to stop relying on it to run your floor.
Have a question that isn't answered here? Reach out to the bistrochat team directly and we'll be happy to talk through your specific setup.
