Tablez vs TheFork

What TheFork is for

TheFork, owned by Tripadvisor, is one of the biggest restaurant marketplaces in Europe. Diners use its app to find restaurants offering a discount, book, and collect loyalty points. For a restaurant with empty tables on a Tuesday, a 30% off promotion on TheFork can genuinely fill them. It also comes with booking software that is perfectly competent: widget, diary, table plan, deposits.

The cost of a marketplace diner

Two costs. The visible one is commission: a fee per diner on bookings that come through TheFork. The bigger one is the discount. A diner who books a 30% off deal has paid 30% less, and you have paid a commission on top. For a table of four spending £120, that is £36 of discount plus the fee, to get a customer who was looking for a deal and will look for the next one somewhere else.

That can still be worth it for a genuinely empty service. The problem is when it becomes the default: regulars learn to book through TheFork for the discount, and you end up paying commission and giving a discount to people who would have come anyway at full price. We have seen menus with a "book direct" plea printed on them for exactly this reason.

What Tablez does

Tablez does not send you diners. It takes bookings from the ones who already found you, on Google, Instagram, Facebook, your website, your menus, and it does it for a flat price. Free up to 60 bookings a month, then £5 or £15 a month, paid yearly. No commission, no per diner fee, no discounts to fund. The customer's details are in your account, exportable any time, and nobody markets to them on your behalf.

The booking page takes under a minute. Three ways to confirm, including live check. A staff app with push alerts. Turn times, cover caps and pacing so a busy night stays calm. Confirmation and reminder emails with a manage link. That covers what most independents actually use.

What you give up

The marketplace, obviously. Also the table plan, deposits (coming soon in Tablez), and TheFork's integrations. If your business model relies on discount driven volume, Tablez alone will not replace TheFork. If you would rather build a full price business on your own customers, it will.

Using Tablez to reduce your TheFork dependence

You do not have to choose on day one. Put a Tablez link on your website, Google and social so your own customers book direct with no commission, and keep TheFork for promotions on quiet nights only. Print "book direct at ..." on the menu and bill. Over a few months you will see what share of bookings actually needed the marketplace, and most venues find it is smaller than they feared.

Switching

Sign up free, add tables and hours, swap the widget on your site for the Tablez embed, and update the links on Google and social. Enter upcoming bookings by hand in the staff app. Reduce or cancel TheFork according to your terms when you are ready. The set up guide covers every step.