RESTAURANTS — WHEATON, ILLINOIS
Websites, private dining enquiries and deposits for restaurants in Wheaton, IL.
A table for two books itself. A party of thirty starts as a message typed at eleven at night, and it goes to whichever kitchen answers it first.
Twenty minutes. You get a written plan and a price. Nothing starts until you say so.
A party of thirty isn't a reservation, it's a negotiation.
Date, headcount, which room, what menu, who can't eat what, whether the grandparents can manage the step, what time the cake comes out. None of that fits in a reservation widget built for a two-top, and none of it survives being shouted across a pass at seven on a Friday.
So the enquiry gets its own form and its own inbox. Every question you'd have asked on the phone, captured while the person is still enthusiastic, sitting in one place where somebody can price it properly on Tuesday morning.
- Date, time and headcount
- Private dining in the room or catering delivered out
- Rough budget per head, in their own words
- Allergies and dietary needs in writing rather than from memory
- How they found you, which is worth more than owners think
The message lands at eleven at night, and Tuesday morning is too late.
Somebody plans a rehearsal dinner once the kids are down. It's late, they're on their third venue, and the same question goes to all three. Whoever replies before breakfast usually takes the booking, and the other two find out weeks later that they lost on speed rather than on food.
An automatic acknowledgement goes out the moment the form lands, carrying the two or three questions you always end up asking anyway. For $100 a month the calls get picked up as well, at whatever hour they come in, with the message and the number waiting for you by the time the doors are locked.
A deposit turns an intention into a booking.
Large parties fall through. They fall through because your room was shortlisted rather than chosen, and holding twenty covers on a Saturday costs you the room whether they show or not. Taking a deposit online at the moment of agreement is the cheapest insurance in this trade, and nobody has ever been insulted by being asked for one.
Payments run through your own site into the same ledger as everything else, so the deposit, the balance and the final invoice are one record instead of three separate conversations with three different people.
Graduation season and the December weeks fill earlier than the phone suggests.
Spring graduations, retirements, first communions, and the stretch before Christmas when every office in town wants a room on the same Thursday. Those dates get claimed months ahead by people planning quietly, and the kitchen that's visible during the planning takes the date.
Last year's parties are also next year's parties. A note in the ledger saying this family did a graduation lunch in May is a message worth sending the following March, and sending it costs you nothing but the minute it takes to approve.
Catering has different answers, so give it a page of its own.
Off-site work runs on different lead times, different minimums and a whole conversation about equipment and staffing. Buried in a paragraph on the menu page, every enquiry starts from zero and half of them were never a fit.
Publish the lead time, what actually travels well and how far you'll drive. You'll get fewer enquiries and more of the ones worth quoting, which is the trade every kitchen wants once it's been burned twice.
The plans, and what each of them covers.
Foundation runs $250 a month plus $250 once at the start. That's the site on your own domain, a Google Business Profile built out properly, email at your own address, and the local search work underneath.
Growth is $500 a month plus $500 at the start, and switches on booking against your Google Calendar, the guest ledger, the automated messages, online payments, expense tracking, monthly reports and the accounting sync. Twelve months, billed the same date each time. A year paid in advance takes 15% off, which comes to $2,550 or $5,100, with setup handled separately. If you want out early, tell us in writing: you pay the current month plus one more, and the domain, the Google profile and the customer list leave with you.
Take Knox Guac apart before you believe a word of this.
Knox Guac is a taqueria we built with ordering switched on. Place an order, watch the confirmation arrive, then look at the same order sitting in the ledger on the other side. Nothing there is a mockup.
Downtown Wheaton runs more than 50 events a year, and the Wheaton Park District puts on Cream of Wheaton across four days in early June at Memorial Park and downtown, with a Fourth of July parade of its own behind it. Every one of those dates fills the street with people who don't live here, and a fair number of them belong to a family already wondering where to put twenty relatives in August. For a kitchen that can be reached while the idea is still fresh, the events calendar is a private dining calendar.
One record per party, from the first message to the last invoice.
CRM is only a name for the place your guest information is kept. For a restaurant that means every enquiry, every deposit taken, every menu agreed and every party that happened last spring, in one list you can sort. The Tuesday follow-up stops depending on whoever happens to remember. And the list is registered in your name — whatever happens between us, it leaves with you.
Questions people actually ask
Straight answers.
Can people request a private party or catering through my site?
That's the main thing this page is about. You get an enquiry form built for large bookings rather than a reservation box, it captures headcount, date, budget and dietary needs, and it lands somewhere you can price it properly instead of in a voicemail nobody has time for.
Can I take a deposit for a big booking online?
Yes, on Growth. Payments are part of the plan, so a deposit link goes out with the confirmation and the balance can be billed later against the same record. You stop holding rooms on trust.
We already use a table reservation app. Does this replace it?
It doesn't have to. Keep the app for two-tops if your staff like it. The site and the ledger handle the parties, the catering enquiries and the follow-up, which is the work the reservation app was never built to do.
See a booking from both sides of the pass.
Order something in the demo, then open the ledger and watch it appear. Ten seconds, no sales script, and nobody will call you unless you ask us to.
Tell us about your biggest room.
Send how many it seats, whether you cater off-site and which month is your worst, and we'll write back the same way you wrote to us.
A real person reads this and gets back to you within 24 hours. If it's urgent, (331) 291‑7400 rings a phone.