Restaurant booking behavior is changing across discovery, reservations, waitlists, and dining occasions. Recent survey and platform data shows that direct restaurant websites, Google search, mobile waitlists, and flexible booking times all influence whether a guest completes a booking.
Table of contents
- Restaurant booking market size and demand
- How diners discover and book restaurants
- Who makes reservations
- When reservations happen
- Waitlists, cancellations, and booking friction
- Reservation trends by restaurant segment
- What booking data means for restaurant operations
Restaurant booking market size and demand
OpenTable is used by 65,000 restaurants worldwide and helps restaurants fill 1.9 billion seats each year, according to the Booking Holdings OpenTable page. The platform also reports more than 155 million restaurant reviews since inception. These figures describe the scale of one major reservation ecosystem rather than the entire restaurant market.
OpenTable’s 2025 dining predictions point to continued interest in eating out. In that survey, 54% of consumers said they planned to dine out more in 2025 than in 2024. The share was higher among younger adults: 71% of Gen Z respondents and 68% of Millennials planned to increase their dining frequency.
Diners also showed interest in variety and experiences. OpenTable reported that 61% planned to try new restaurants in 2025 instead of staying with the same places. In the same source, 42% of Americans said they were more interested in experiential dining in the next year than in the current year. OpenTable Experiences bookings were up 27% year over year.
OpenTable’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2024 provides another measure of platform activity. The list was compiled from more than 14 million diner reviews using data from October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024. It represented 53 cities, with Chicago accounting for 10% of the list, and included more than 20 OpenTable Icons restaurants. These are list-specific figures, not a census of all restaurant bookings.
How diners discover and book restaurants
The restaurant’s own website is the leading booking destination in Toast’s 2025 Reservation Data. Sixty-five percent of diners surveyed said they go directly to a restaurant website to book a reservation. Google is also central to discovery: 55% said they search Google for restaurants when booking a reservation.
Discovery preferences vary by age. Among respondents aged 54 and older, 63% chose Google search as their first choice for discovering restaurants. The corresponding figure for respondents aged 18 to 24 was 46%. Social media was used by 46% of respondents aged 18 to 34 to discover a restaurant.
Booking convenience can affect demand. Toast reported that 44% of diners said a restaurant becomes less appealing and they stop trying if booking is difficult. Seating choice matters too: 44% preferred seating options when booking a reservation. A limited-time offer can also change intent, with 68% of guests saying they were more likely to book when a restaurant offered a limited-time food special.
The option to join a waitlist is another conversion signal. Forty-five percent of diners were more likely to dine at a restaurant offering an online or app-based waitlist. Among guests aged 18 to 34, 59% preferred a mobile waitlist or text-message option while waiting for a table.
Who makes reservations
Reservations are not a universal part of dining behavior. Toast’s 2025 Reservation Data found that only 12% of diners said they always make a dinner reservation. More than 50% said they never or rarely make one, while 34% said they sometimes make a reservation, often for special occasions.
The same survey found differences by gender and age. Men were twice as likely as women to say they always make a reservation: 17% of men compared with 8% of women. Married men reported a higher rate still, at 27%, compared with 16% for men overall. Diners aged 25 to 45 were twice as likely to make a reservation as the youngest and oldest generations.
For sit-down, table-service restaurants, reservation availability can still be important even when guests do not reserve every time. The National Restaurant Association’s State of the Restaurant Industry 2025 reported that 56% of Gen Z adults considered the option to make a reservation important when choosing this type of restaurant.
Restaurant operators continue to support multiple booking channels. More than 9 in 10 operators that take reservations allow customers to call the restaurant for a reservation, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 report. That finding places phone booking alongside digital discovery and online reservation paths rather than treating it as a fully replaced channel.
When reservations happen
Toast’s Q3 2024 Restaurant Trends show a strong concentration of reservations on the weekend. Saturdays accounted for 27% of all Q3 2024 reservations on Toast, Fridays for 21%, and Sundays for 15%. Thursdays represented 11%, Wednesdays 10%, Tuesdays 8%, and Mondays 6%.
Year-over-year movement was strongest on some traditionally quieter days. Monday reservations were up 11% and Tuesday reservations were also up 11%. Wednesday reservations rose 8%, Sunday reservations rose 6%, and Thursday and Friday reservations each rose 2%. Saturday reservations declined 1% year over year.
| Day | Share of Q3 2024 reservations | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 6% | +11% |
| Tuesday | 8% | +11% |
| Wednesday | 10% | +8% |
| Thursday | 11% | +2% |
| Friday | 21% | +2% |
| Saturday | 27% | -1% |
| Sunday | 15% | +6% |
Dinner bookings cluster around the early evening. Six o’clock reservations accounted for about 27% of dinner reservations in Q3 2024 and rose 6% year over year. Seven o’clock reservations represented 25% of dinner reservations and rose 1%. Earlier times also gained volume: reservations at 4 p.m. were up about 3%, while reservations at 5 p.m. were up about 8%.
OpenTable’s 2025 dining predictions identified Wednesday as an opportunity. OpenTable data showed an 11% year-over-year increase in Wednesday dining for January 1 through September 30, 2024, compared with the same period in 2023. In the accompanying survey, 43% of Americans said they planned to dine out on Wednesday during the week, and 41% said they would do so to break up the week.
Party size is also shifting in OpenTable data. Solo dining was up 10% year over year, while parties of six or more were up 8%. Both patterns matter for floor plans, table combinations, and the inventory exposed through a booking system.
Waitlists, cancellations, and booking friction
Waitlist timing creates a practical limit on how long guests remain available. Toast’s Q3 2024 Restaurant Trends reported that guests waited an average of 20 minutes on a waitlist before canceling. Guests who were successfully seated waited an average of 9 minutes.
The difference between those two wait times is useful operationally: a waitlist entry that converts is associated with a shorter observed wait than one that ends in cancellation. Toast also reported that guests were canceling reservations 19% less often in 2024 than in 2023.
Compensation can affect willingness to wait. Toast’s 2025 Reservation Data found that 82% of diners said they were more likely to wait longer if offered a complimentary drink. The result does not specify a universal wait-time increase, but it quantifies the strength of the stated incentive.
Reservation resale is another source of concern. In an NRA Morning Consult Reservation Polling Memo, 80% of consumers said restaurants and customers should be protected from reservations made by resale companies, and 56% said that protection was very important. Seventy-two percent were concerned that resale makes certain restaurants out of reach for more customers, while 70% were concerned that middleman reservations harm restaurants financially by increasing no-shows.
The communication problem was also prominent: 74% were concerned that restaurants cannot directly communicate with the reservation user when a reservation is purchased on a resale site. Seventy percent supported legislation to prevent unauthorized sale of restaurant reservations in their city, and two thirds of adults agreed that companies reselling reservations are harmful to restaurants and customers.
Reservation trends by restaurant segment
The National Restaurant Association’s State of the Restaurant Industry 2025 reported different reservation patterns by restaurant segment. Among full-service operators, 22% said parties with reservations were a larger share of traffic than two years earlier, 24% said they were a smaller share, and 54% said the share was about the same.
Family dining operators reported a more mixed picture: 15% said reserved parties were a larger share of traffic, 32% said a smaller share, and 53% said about the same. Casual dining operators were somewhat more likely to report growth, with 26% saying reserved parties were a larger share, 24% saying smaller, and 50% saying about the same.
Fine dining operators reported 23% larger, 16% smaller, and 61% about the same. The figures describe operators’ comparisons with two years earlier; they do not measure the percentage of all traffic that arrived through reservations.
| Restaurant segment | Larger share | Smaller share | About the same |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-service | 22% | 24% | 54% |
| Family dining | 15% | 32% | 53% |
| Casual dining | 26% | 24% | 50% |
| Fine dining | 23% | 16% | 61% |
What booking data means for restaurant operations
The booking data points to several measurable operating priorities. Direct website booking deserves attention because 65% of surveyed diners used a restaurant website to book. Google visibility matters because 55% searched Google when booking, while age-specific discovery patterns show that search remains especially important among older diners and social media reaches a substantial share of younger adults.
Reservation design should accommodate different levels of intent. Only 12% always make a dinner reservation, and more than half never or rarely do so. At the same time, 56% of Gen Z adults said reservation availability was important when choosing a sit-down table-service restaurant. A restaurant can therefore benefit from making reservations easy to find without assuming every guest will use them.
The timing data supports testing weekday inventory and earlier dinner slots. Monday and Tuesday reservations each rose 11% year over year on Toast in Q3 2024, while 5 p.m. reservations rose 8% and 6 p.m. reservations rose 6%. Saturday still represented the largest share of reservations at 27%, but it was down 1% year over year in the same data.
Waitlist tools should communicate clearly and quickly. Forty-five percent were more likely to dine at a restaurant with an online or app waitlist, 59% of younger guests preferred mobile or text updates, and successful waitlist guests waited 9 minutes on average in Toast’s Q3 2024 data. These figures support measuring waitlist conversion, cancellation timing, and notification performance separately.
Finally, booking systems need reliable guest ownership and communication. The NRA Morning Consult polling found that 74% were concerned about losing direct communication when a reservation is purchased through a resale site. For restaurant operators, the reservation record is therefore not only a seat allocation: it is also a channel for confirmations, changes, waitlist updates, and no-show prevention.