What OpenTable's per-cover fees really cost a 40-seat restaurant (with the maths)
Restaurants tell us "OpenTable is about £150 a month". It is not. It is a subscription plus a fee per diner on some bookings, and the second part is the one that depends on how well you are doing. Here is the maths for a typical 40 seat independent, with every assumption written down so you can swap in your own numbers.
The restaurant
A 40 seat independent. Open for dinner six nights a week, lunch on Saturday and Sunday. Roughly 30 covers on an average dinner and 25 at a weekend lunch, so:
- 6 dinners x 30 covers = 180 covers a week
- 2 lunches x 25 covers = 50 covers a week
- 230 covers a week, about 1,000 covers a month
- Average party of 3, so about 330 bookings a month, of which perhaps 70% are booked in advance rather than walk-ins: 230 online or phone bookings, 700 booked covers
If your restaurant is bigger or busier, scale up. The shape of the answer does not change.
Where the bookings come from
This is the number that matters, and the one nobody knows until they measure it. Of your 700 booked covers a month, how many arrive through the OpenTable app or site (network bookings, which attract a per diner fee) and how many through your own website widget (usually not charged per diner)? We will run three scenarios: 25%, 50% and 75% network.
The maths
| Scenario | Network covers a month | Per diner fees at £1 (assumed) | Subscription (from around) | Monthly total | Yearly total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25% network | 175 | £175 | £149 | £324 | £3,888 |
| 50% network | 350 | £350 | £149 | £499 | £5,988 |
| 75% network | 525 | £525 | £149 | £674 | £8,088 |
| Tablez Pro | n/a | £0 | £15 | £15 | £180 |
Per diner fee is an illustrative assumption of £1. If your quote is £1.50 or £2 per diner, multiply the fees column accordingly. Subscription figure is the published "from around" starting point; higher tiers cost more.
At 230 bookings a month, this restaurant is comfortably inside Tablez Pro's 500 booking limit at £15 a month, paid yearly as £180. Even if every booking were online, it would still be under 500.
The bit that stings
Look at what happens on a good month. December: the restaurant is full every night, 40 covers a service instead of 30, and a Christmas party or two. Booked covers go from 700 to perhaps 1,000. At 50% network and £1 a diner, the fees go from £350 to £500 for the month. The busiest, most profitable month of the year is also the most expensive month for the booking system. The software did not do anything different. You did.
Now the reverse. A quiet February with 500 booked covers: fees drop to £250, but the £149 subscription does not, so the floor is still around £400. There is no month in which this restaurant pays less than about £300 for bookings.
"But the network sends me diners"
It might. That is the honest case for OpenTable, and in a city centre or a tourist town it can be real. The question is what share of your "network" diners are actually new. A regular who searches your name on Google, sees an OpenTable reserve button, and books through it counts as a network booking and attracts the fee. So does someone who saw your Instagram post and opened the OpenTable app because that is where they book everything.
The test is cheap. Put a direct booking link on your Google Business Profile and website, tell customers to book direct, and watch the split over two months. Restaurants that do this usually find the truly new diners from the network are a fraction of the network bookings they are paying for.
What a fair alternative costs
Tablez has no per diner fee on any plan. This restaurant would sit on Pro at £15 a month (paid yearly, £180) for up to 500 bookings, or Starter at £5 a month (£60 a year) if it took fewer than 150 online. Over a year, the difference against the 50% network scenario is roughly £5,800, which is a decent chunk of a chef's salary, or a new extraction system, or simply profit.
What you give up is the marketplace, the floor plan and, for now, deposits (coming soon in Tablez). If the marketplace really is bringing you new diners you could not reach, keep it and use it for that. But run the numbers with your own figures first, using your real quote and your real network share. Most independents have never done it.
Do the maths for your own restaurant
- Booked covers a month (from your diary or system reports).
- Share that came through the network (your provider's reports show this).
- Your quoted per diner fee.
- Your subscription tier.
Multiply 1 by 2 by 3, add 4. Compare with £5 or £15 a month, paid yearly. Then ask how many of the network diners were really new.
Related: Tablez vs OpenTable, Tablez vs TheFork, and how to take table bookings online.
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