Due to the new restrictions of the Belgium government, restaurants have to close their doors for four weeks. We cannot really sugarcoat this – we had all hoped for better news… 😔

This step-by-step guide helps you to change your settings in Formitable and shows you what to do in these times to generate some cash-flow and not lose touch with your guests.

1. Close reservations for four weeks

According to the latest guidelines, restaurants have to close for four weeks. You can stop accepting reservations by closing your restaurant for this period.

Go to your Special & Closed days section in the Shift settings.
Click on the plus button (+) and add a new period, starting October 15th up until four weeks ahead.
Select closed at 'Accept online reservations'.
Click Apply.

2. Contact guests, reschedule, or cancel

In the Insights > Reservations you can see all upcoming reservations and get in touch with your guests. Send a message to multiple guests asking them to reschedule their booking, rather than canceling it.

If you need to cancel reservations for the upcoming days and weeks, you can do this there too.

3. Allow guests to reschedule their prepaid reservations

How far in advance your guests can change their prepaid reservation is determined by your refund and cancellation window at the time of booking. In these times we want you to be more flexible. You can allow guests to change their reservations regardless of previous settings.

Go to your reservations section at Setup and set the change window to ‘Always possible’.
Afterward, go to the features section at Setup and enable 'Always allow prepaid bookings to be changed'.

4. Offer your restaurant experience at home with takeaway

Start offering your restaurant experience at home, while your doors have to remain closed! Provide guests with your signature dishes, set meals, and maybe even fitting wines. Start offering takeaway for delivery and pick-up.

We have recorded a webinar (in Dutch) helping you with:

Inspiring examples from other restaurants
Setting up your own takeaway shop
Promoting your takeaway offer
How to manage your incoming takeaway orders

📌 Tip: Get inspired by these 10 takeaway examples

5. Let guests help you with gift vouchers

If you are not already doing so, now is a great time to start selling gift vouchers. This will help you to generate some cash flow for the times you cannot welcome guests in your restaurant.

📌 Tip: Use our toolkit with templates to promote your gift vouchers

Promote your gift vouchers and takeaway menu on your website and by mail. Inform your guests about your offerings on your website with the promotional pop-up feature. Even better, get in touch with your loyal guests with a newsletter. You can create an email campaign in Formitable in literally minutes.

7. How to change your subscription

If you are planning to work with takeaway and gift vouchers, you might want to have a look at the different subscriptions. This could decrease the fee per paid online transaction for takeaway and vouchers. The different subscriptions can be found here.

You can switch monthly between the different subscriptions. This way you always use the one that fits you best at that point.

To view or change your current subscription visit the Billing section.

Do you have questions about the different subscriptions or do you want to have some advice on which to choose? Get in touch with us.

We help where we can. If you have any questions, talk to us in the chat or send us an e-mail to support@formitable.com.

We got this together! 💪