The book, shaped like your restaurant.

Seatings, not one blunt calendar

A dining room that turns every two hours and a chef's counter that runs one sitting at seven are different things, and the book treats them that way. Each seating carries its own windows, interval, turn time by party size, cover ceiling and booking horizon.

• Rolling intervals or fixed times — 5:30 and 8:15, nothing between
• Turn times that lengthen with the party
• Release windows: hold the counter until a fortnight out
• Cut-offs that stop online booking when the pass is already loaded

Communal seating, counted properly

A six-seat counter is not one table. Three parties of two can sit there, and the book knows how many seats are left rather than whether the table is taken. The bar is a pool: a number of seats and a maximum party, with no stool assigned until someone sits.

Menus a guest books into

A tasting menu with a choice at the fourth course and a caviar supplement on the first is an ordinary fact of a serious restaurant. Guests choose per cover when they book — the chicken or the turbot, the supplement or not — and the kitchen has the ticket before the night begins.

• Choices and supplements come from the menu itself, not a second catalogue
• Every price is calculated on the server; the browser only sends ids
• Dietary notes travel with the cover, not a free-text box

Already on OpenTable or Resy?

Keep them. Say so in Settings and your Cartelier website sends guests straight to your existing book — embedded on your own page where they publish a widget — while the rest of the studio works exactly the same. We would rather tell you the truth than pretend to a sync that no public API allows.