31 · Times a customer can actually book

A customer booking a table sees only the times they can still walk into. This chapter is what that means for you, because it is the difference between a booking list you can honour and one you spend the evening apologising for.

The rule

A time is offered only if it starts at least 15 minutes from now, on your restaurant's clock (Indian Standard Time), whatever device or country the customer is booking from.

So at 12:00, a room open 11:00–23:00 offers 13:00 onwards. It does not offer 11:00 or 12:00 — those tables are in the past, and a booking against one is a booking you either refuse or seat late.

The quarter of an hour is not arbitrary. It is the time it takes for the booking to reach you, for you to see it, and for the table to be laid. A slot offered with less notice than that is a promise the room has no way to keep.

Two things the rule has to get right

A room that runs past midnight. A service day of 18:00–02:00 lists 01:00 after 23:30. Read as plain clock times, 01:00 < now at 23:45 and the last two hours of the night disappear — exactly the tables you most want filled. Times are compared on the scale of one service day, so the early-morning tail stays where it belongs.

A page left open. Availability is fetched once per date and party size, and people leave a booking page open while they decide. The list re-asks the server every minute while the date is today, and between those asks the screen drops a time that has gone. A time the server takes away is never put back by the browser — only the next ask can bring back a table someone cancelled.

What the customer sees when the day is over

Once every remaining time has started, the panel says "Today's tables have all gone" and offers the next day, rather than "no slots in this view", which reads like a filter problem and sends people clicking the wrong button.

A date that has already gone cannot be picked at all: the calendar starts at today.

What this does not change

Your opening hours, your slot length and your table list still decide which times exist in the first place — this only decides which of them are still ahead of the clock. Change the hours in Restaurant Profile → Opening Hours and the bookable times follow.