Winning Back Direct Bookings

Foreword, from the founders

Hey, I'm Chanel, a co-founder of Sorino. Over the last few years our team has sat with a lot of restaurant owners, and the same quiet frustration keeps coming up. You do the hard part. You fill the tables. And then a slice of the money goes to whoever the booking or the order happened to come through.

It is not that the platforms do nothing. They bring you covers. But once someone already knows your restaurant, once they are calling or messaging to book a table, paying a fee on that booking is paying twice for a guest you had already won. A lot of those guests would happily book with you directly. They ring during service and no one is free to pick up. They message on Instagram and it sits unread. So they book through the app that answers.

This report is about closing that gap: answering your own guests, on your own channels, so the booking, and the margin, stays with you. Not a trick, not a chatbot bolted on the front. Just your phone, your inbox and your messages, actually answered.

What this report covers

Every restaurant lives with the same tension: the booking and delivery platforms bring you reach, but every cover or order they bring costs you a slice of an already thin margin. This report looks at one practical move: winning more of your bookings back onto your own channels, where they cost you nothing per booking.

Section one

The squeeze: why every point of margin matters now

You do not need convincing that margins are tight, but it is worth saying plainly. On UKHospitality's own reading of the sector, around one in three hospitality businesses were operating at a loss, and roughly seven in ten were running at or below 85% of capacity. This is an industry that employs about 3.5 million people and puts around £93 billion into the economy, working on margins where a few points either way decides whether a site makes money.

When the margin is that thin, the cut a third party takes on each cover or order is not a rounding error. It is often the difference.

Section two

The covers that come with a cut

Third-party reservation apps and delivery services each take their own slice of a cover or an order, and the busiest venues, the ones sending the most volume through those channels, feel it most. We are not going to put a single headline percentage on that here, because the rates vary by platform and by deal, and we only publish numbers we can stand behind. But every operator knows the shape of it: the more you lean on the apps, the more of each table and each order goes to someone else.

The point that stings: plenty of those bookings are guests who already knew you and would have booked direct, if only someone had been free to answer.

Section three

Answer the booking before it defaults to an app

The direct booking that gets lost usually goes like this. The phone rings during service. The chef-patron is on the pass, the floor is full, and no one can get to it. The guest does not wait. They book through the app that answers. You get the cover, but now it carries a fee you would not have paid if someone had picked up.

The fix is making sure the direct channels are actually answered, every time:

• The phone is answered during service, in the restaurant's own voice, and the table is booked then and there.
• The enquiry about a table for ten, or a private dinner, gets a fast, useful reply while the guest is still deciding.
• The Instagram message about Saturday gets the same answer, from the same source of truth, so a guest never has to chase.

The chef-patron cannot be on the pass and on the phone at once. The point is not to replace anyone. It is to cover the channels that go unanswered while the team works the floor.

Section four

What the AI actually does: four channels, one knowledge base

Sorino puts an AI agent on the channels that go unanswered, all reading from one knowledge base of your own information: your menus, your hours, your allergen detail and your policies. It works alongside your team, covering the moments they cannot pick up.

The point of all of it is simple: catch the direct booking the moment it arrives, so it never has to default to a channel that charges you.

Section five

What we will not let AI do

Winning back margin is not worth getting the basics wrong. So a few lines we hold:

• It answers from your knowledge base, not from guesswork. If it does not know, it says so and hands off.
• Allergen and dietary questions are answered from a written, checked record, and passed to the kitchen, never guessed. If it is not certain, the guest is told a person will confirm.
• Anything sensitive, a complaint or a complex request, goes to a person.
• It works alongside your team, never instead of them.
• It is on the record. You can see what it said and what it booked.

Getting started

You do not have to take our word for any of this. The honest way to judge it is to hear it answer.

Build your restaurant's agent, ask it the awkward questions a real guest would, and hear how it sounds before you commit to anything. If it can take the booking your phone would have missed, that is a booking that keeps its full margin, starting with the very next call.

Sources

We do not publish a figure unless it is real and attributable. The numbers in this report are:

• Sector margin context (around one in three businesses at a loss; 69% at or below 85% capacity; 3.5 million employed; £93 billion): UKHospitality, 2025. ukhospitality.org.uk
• Reservation-app and delivery commissions vary by platform and by deal, so we do not publish them here as a single figure. We only publish numbers we can attribute to a primary source.