Uncle Tom's Cabin

[Cookham Webmaster]

A quick polite reminder - If you have a table booked with us however can not attend for any reason, please call and let us know. We have been extremely busy recently and have unfortunately had to turn people away on numerous occasions as we are fully booked, only for people not to show up. Within the past 10 days we have had a table of 6, a table of 5, two tables of 4, a table of 3 and a table of 2 all not show up. Sorry to those we haven't been able to serve because of this!

[grumpyoldgit]

A suggestion: take a credit card as well as a phone number when you take the booking; validate the card, and advise them that if they don't either show up or cancel with reasonable notice, you will charge £x per person to their card - you can decide what the value of x should be - but make it sufficient that they won't want to write it off. If they won't agree, don't accept the booking. You'll lose a few bookings, but I would guess not to the value of your loss from the 20 no-shows you've mentioned.

Just my 2p worth.