F.A.Q.
Frequently Asked Question

The Carbonara app and service is entirely FREE.
Are there any costs for Text Messages?
No. Text messages are included in the free service.

Is there any per-booking fee?
No. All bookings, whether walk-in, reservation, or online reservations are all free.

The Carbonara team is leading the revolution in restaurant software development. As former restaurant operators, we strive to provide great service to our restaurant partners at a price that we think is the most beneficial to restaurants: Free.

We are building out revolutionary new features on our free restaurant platform. See our Truly Free page to learn more.

Carbonara is available in western Europe, US, Canada, South America and Australia. (If we are not available in your country, let us know and we will take it into consideration)

Carbonara App is available in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. 

In addition to this, can you use the English interface in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark as we have messaging in Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.

Today, Carbonara app is available on any iOS or Android device, including smartphones and tablets.

Is Carbonara app available on laptop or desktop computers?
Yes, Carbonara is now also available from your computer. You can log in to your account from any browser and use all features that are available in the app.

Carbonara app offers 2-way SMS messaging to customers. The app includes pre-programmed, customizable messages that are automatically delivered to customers in the waitlist and customers that have reserved a table. Customers can respond to the SMS that restaurants send, and restaurants can respond to customer SMS messages.

Can I customize the messages?
Yes. You can customize most of the body of the message, however we require that every message begin with the restaurant name and include certain information, like the waiting time for a waitlisted party, or the date and time of the reservation for a reservation party.

Does Carbonara app offer email?
Carbonara app does not currently support email between restaurants and customers, and does not offer any email marketing program at this time.

Customer phone numbers that are added to the Carbonara system are stored in a secure server and are only shared with our 3rd-party messaging service in order to deliver messages to customers.

Does Carbonara app send customers marketing messages to their phone numbers?

No, Carbonara app does not use customer phone numbers for any marketing purpose, whatsoever. Carbonara app only uses customer phone numbers to facilitate seating at the restaurant and furthermore, restaurants have control over what messages are sent to customers by operation of the app.

Yes. Carbonara app offers free online reservations for any restaurant that wishes to accept them.

You can also add the link to your Facebook, Instagram and Google page.

Contact us at support@carbonaraapp.com to obtain your online booking link.

No, for now our system allows groups of up to 10 people. We believe that, over that number, the customer should get in touch with the restaurant directly and ask for availability.

The QR code feature is something we have developed for our busiest restaurants. It works in the following way:
– Customers scan a printed QR code you have placed in/outside the restaurant and add themselves to the waitlist with name and phone number.
– You will get a notification from the Carbonara Manager App instantly that a new party is in the waitlist. You then allocate a wait time to this party and seat them as usual when their table is ready.

This will save your staff a bunch of time as your guests will be the ones who enter the information. You will also make sure that the name and phone number is correct which makes it easier to recall customers when their table is ready.

The QR code feature is 100% free to use.
Please contact us at support@carbonaraapp.com if you want to learn more or if you want to give the QR code a try.

Yes. Carbonara app requires that for waitlist parties, the message must include both the name of the restaurant and the estimated wait time. This ensures that the customer has, at a minimum, a rough approximation of the waiting time.

Experience has shown that giving customers an estimated wait time increases the likelihood that customers are willing to wait, as having more information about the waiting experience lessens the burden of waiting.

Our experience shows that it is ideal to notify the party prior to the table becoming available. This helps to ensure that once the table is fully vacated and reset for the next customers, the table can be filled quickly and does not sit open.

We recommend that restaurants using the waitlist feature for walk-in business do not let tables sit open for longer than 5 minutes.

What do I do if I give away a table for a party that hasn’t returned, but then the party returns and wants to be seated?

If a party is late to return for their table, it is best practice to move on to the next customer in the list. Should the party that is late to return then arrive and ask to be seated, we recommend to keep that party at the top of the list and give these customers the next available table that will accommodate them.

Carbonara does not store any data beyond 24 hours after seating the client. It is therefore not possible to obtain a database of usual clients.

You can always fuse two or more tables together by adding a comma when entering a reservation and/or walk-in customer. For example, if you want to merge tables 3 and 4, all you’d have to do is typing “3,4”.

At the moment, our system does not support letters for tables, only numbers. You can always get around this by establishing an internal setuo for your restaurant. For example, table “AB” could be “12” (as the first two letters of the alphabet). Whatever suits you best!

If you own two or more restaurants that are using the app, you have to log out from one account to log in to the other.

We will however enable a multi profile interface in the foreseeable future.