Every full book is really two puzzles at once: fitting everyone in, and fitting them in well. Get it right and the room flows — parties are seated on time, big groups have somewhere to go, and tables turn without a scramble. Get it slightly wrong and you feel it all night. We have been building something to take a little of that weight off your team.
The optimiser, in a sentence
It looks at a whole day of bookings alongside your table plan, then suggests a tidier arrangement — the same guests, better seated. One glance, and you can see how the room could run more smoothly.
One tap on “Optimise tables” and NomNom lays out the suggested moves — and exactly what each one buys you.
Where you’ll find it
Pick any day in NomNom Web, open the ⋮ menu at the top of the screen, and choose Optimise tables. The preview appears in a couple of seconds — and remember, looking never changes anything.
Open the ⋮ menu on any day in NomNom Web — Optimise tables sits right at the top.
A worked example
Picture a Saturday night. A couple has been seated on your big six-top join, and a party of five rings wanting a table — but there is nowhere obvious to put them. The optimiser spots that the couple would sit just as happily on a quiet two-top, which frees the join for the five. Two small moves, and suddenly everyone has a table.
Before and after: the couple slides onto a snug two-top, the five take the freed-up join, and no one is left standing.
What it is quietly good at
- Seating more of your guests. When a party has nowhere to go, it finds the shuffle that fits them in — even if that means first nudging a smaller booking onto a table that suits it better.
- Protecting your joins. Two friends sitting on a table that is half of your big six-top join? It will move them to a proper two-top and keep the join free for the group that needs it.
- Fewer awkward gaps. It nudges bookings back-to-back where that helps, so you are not left holding a forty-minute hole that is too short to sell.
- Better-fitting tables. A couple on a table for six is lovely for them and costly for you. The optimiser prefers a snug fit and saves the big tables for big parties.
- Requested tables stay put. If a guest asked for their usual table, it is off-limits — the optimiser will never move a booking you have pinned.
- Rescuing squeezed parties. Six guests perched on tables meant for four? It treats that as a problem worth solving and finds them a proper home.
- Your favourite tables first. Where two arrangements are equally good, it leans toward the tables you prefer to fill — the priorities you have already set on your table plan.
You are always in the driver’s seat
Nothing happens automatically. The optimiser only ever suggests — you see every proposed move, and nothing changes until you press Apply. If you like your room exactly as it is, that is a perfectly good answer, and it will simply tell you so rather than shuffle things for the sake of it.
When your book is already tight, the optimiser says so — and leaves it well alone.
Safe to run mid-service
We designed the optimiser so you can reach for it at 7pm on a Saturday, not just on a quiet morning. A few promises it keeps without you having to think about them:
- Seated guests stay seated. A party that has arrived — or is due within the hour — keeps its table. The optimiser plans around them, never through them.
- Online bookings in progress are respected. If a guest is midway through booking a table on your website, that table is already spoken for and will never be suggested to someone else.
- It knows which tables are out today. A patio table that only runs in summer, or a table you rest on Mondays, is never offered — though anyone already sitting there is left in peace.
- Late nights are handled. Bookings that run past midnight — last night’s or tonight’s — keep their tables blocked out, so early-hours parties never collide.
- If the book moves on, it steps back. Should a booking change between preview and apply — cancelled, reseated by a colleague, or the party walks in — the optimiser simply skips that move and tells you plainly: “Applied 3 of 4 moves.” And if applying would ever double-book a table, it applies nothing at all and asks you to take a fresh look instead.
How it makes up its mind
Under the hood it scores every possible arrangement on the things that matter to a real service — empty seats, wasted gaps, how many big-table joins each seating ties up, and whether everyone has a table at all — and hunts for the tidiest plan. The one rule it never breaks: it will never hand you a plan that is worse than the one you already have. It also reads the turn times from your own meal set-up, so what counts as a “sellable gap” matches how your venue actually runs — a ninety-minute hole means something different in a café than in a tasting-menu dining room.
Built to be trusted
A tool that rearranges your book has to be dependable, so we have been unusually thorough. Alongside the everyday checks, we run the optimiser against tens of thousands of randomly generated services — every table shape, every awkward clash, every fully-booked Saturday we could dream up — and confirm it keeps its promises on every single one. And on smaller services we go further still: we work out every arrangement that exists, end to end, and check the optimiser found the best one. If it cannot improve a plan, it leaves it well alone.
We are putting the finishing touches on it now and will let you know the moment it is ready to try. As always, we would love to hear how your team would want to use it.