Toast Tables™: Experiences

Events and Experiences Overview
Set Up Your First Experience
Set Your Experience Internal Settings
Frequently Asked Questions

Events and Experiences Overview

The Toast Tables™ Experiences feature allows you to simultaneously host regular service alongside special events or dining experiences with ease. For example, while offering regular dinner service, you can now offer a separate, prix fixe reservation at the chef’s counter with distinct settings and messaging.

This is also used to reserve special spaces or rooms while still operating with regular service for “Eatertainment” reservations such as bowling, axe throwing, and more.

Note: Experiences operate independently from and complementary to Schedules. If you would like to offer only an experience for the evening and not your typical reservations, see Toast Tables™: Schedules to learn how to set a special schedule turning off your regular reservable tables.

Set Up Your First Experience

To set up your first experience:

Navigate to Waitlist and Reservations in the left menu bar.
Select Experiences. If you’re familiar with Schedules, you’ll see that this page is set up very similarly. Your existing experiences, once created, will live on the left, and you can access further details about the experience on the right.
Select +Create a New Experience.
Name your experience and add a customer-facing description.
Select whether you want this experience to run for specific dates or every day, along with the start and end times.
Select the dining area to which this experience applies.
Select whether this experience can be reserved online.

Note: The experience will automatically be toggled OFF to ensure you have time to review and set internal settings. Review the green banner at the top of the page and toggle the experience ON when ready.

Set Your Experience Internal Settings

Details

The About section on the details page is the same customer-facing description that you set when you first created your experience. This is required, and can be edited at any time on this page.

Online Access

The Online Access tab allows you to:

Toggle the ability to reserve this experience online on or off at any point.
Copy the online reservation link for this experience so you can easily add it to your website.
Set the number of hours ahead of time these experiences can be reserved so you can always ensure you are properly prepared.
Set the days in maximum days in advance that a guest can book this experience.
Set a minimum and maximum party size for each experience. For example, if each bowling lane can only accommodate 6 total bowlers, you can notate this here by setting a minimum of one, and a maximum of six.
If the Online Access is hidden, it will not show on your main page, but still bookable with a direct link.

Table Availability

If you set a specific dining area when you initially created this experience, the tables you selected within that dining area should properly appear on this page. If, for example, you would like to have your bowling experience available for only five out of your six available lanes however, you can adjust the individual lane you would like to turn off here.

Table availability and inventory can be shared between your regular schedule and experiences. For example, if you’d like to offer regular reservations along with Experiences such as tasting menus or wine pairings at all tables, you can do so.

Note: If you’d like certain tables to be reservable exclusively for experiences, be sure to remove the table from your regular reservation inventory during the time frame in which the experience is offered.

Turn Times

Turn times determine how long a party is expected to occupy a table. Setting accurate turn times will help you maximize each table's capacity, and you can do that by party size, through five minute increments, on this page.

Flow Control

Flow control helps ensure smooth operations by limiting the number of guests that can book your experience. On this page, you can set both reservation increments and max covers for your experience.

Reservation increments create slots that more accurately reflect when reservations should begin within your booking hours.
Max cover is the max number of guests that can book per reservation increment.

Note: Events and Experiences operate independently from Schedules. For example, if your regular schedule allows a maximum of 15 guests every 15 minutes and your experience also has a maximum of 15 guests every 15 minutes, then technically, up to 30 guests could arrive within the same time frame. This is still limited by table availability to prevent overbooking.

Payments & Fees

Prepayments and add-ons, cancellation fees, and deposits can be set for your experiences. To learn more, see Toast Tables Deposits, Prepayments, Add-Ons and Cancellation Fees.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are my settings not reflecting the turn times or flow settings I already set up?

Experiences settings operate independently from your Schedules settings, and do not pull your Schedules settings by default to allow for greater customization. All settings must be adjusted within each Toast Tables component individually.

I set up an experience but none of the changes I made are showing.

Settings must be saved on each individual setting tab before proceeding to the next tab, or settings won't be saved.

Does my experiences schedule override my existing default schedule?

No, experiences and schedules operate independently from each other. Experiences will not override your default Schedule.

Can I set up optional add-ons for my experiences such as a wine pairings?

Yes! To learn more about configuring Add-Ons for your experiences or schedules see Toast Tables Deposits, Prepayments, Add-Ons and Cancellation Fees.