Is Fork Time a restaurant CRM?

It holds a full guest record: name, contact, visit history, dietary needs, allergies, occasions, seating preferences and notes, updated from every channel. It is built for service rather than marketing, so it does not run segmented campaigns or loyalty programmes.

How is this different from a marketing CRM?

A marketing CRM is measured by the guests it brings back. Fork Time's guest records are measured at the table, by whether your team knows who is arriving and what they need before the party reaches the stand.

Does the guest record include guests who did not book?

Yes. Walk-ins, waitlist guests and anyone who called or messaged all attach to a guest record.

Can I import my existing guest list?

Yes. Guest data from your current system is imported during onboarding, including contact details, visit history and notes where your existing platform exports them.

Can I export my guest data?

Yes. Your full guest list exports in a standard format at any time, at no charge, including visit history and notes.

Does it work across multiple venues?

Yes. Restaurant groups can recognise the same guest at every site while keeping bookings and service notes venue-specific.

GUEST RECORDS · RESTAURANT CRM

Restaurant CRM your host actually uses during service.

Guest Records is Fork Time's guest database: one record per guest holding contact details, visit history, dietary needs, allergies, occasions, seating preferences and your team's notes. Every record updates itself from phone calls, SMS, email, WhatsApp and web chat, because the conversations and the bookings run in the same system rather than in two products stitched together. Your host opens the booking and already knows who is arriving, what they cannot eat and what happened last time. Guest Records is included on every Fork Time plan.

WHAT RESTAURANT CRM ACTUALLY MEANS

The term covers two different products and buyers regularly end up with the wrong one.

Marketing CRM exists to bring guests back: segmentation, campaigns, automated email and text, loyalty, attribution. It is measured in revenue generated from people who were not coming in tonight.

Service CRM exists to look after the guests who are already booked: who they are, what they cannot eat, what they are celebrating, where they like to sit, what happened last time. It is measured at the table.

Fork Time is the second one. Every guest record is built to be useful in the ninety seconds before a party reaches the host stand, and it updates from every channel automatically because the conversations and the bookings run in the same system.

If your next dollar comes from campaigns and segmentation rather than from recognising the people already walking in, you want a marketing platform, and SevenRooms is the stronger tool for it. We would rather say that than sell you something narrower than what you need.

ONE RECORD, UPDATED FROM EVERY CHANNEL

Most restaurants hold guest history in four places at once: the booking system, a notebook at the stand, someone's inbox and the manager's memory. None of them are open when the party arrives.

A guest who calls on Tuesday, texts a change on Thursday and emails about a birthday on Friday is one record in Fork Time, not three. Every conversation that lands in One Inbox attaches to that guest, so the allergy mentioned on the phone is on the booking before the party sits down.

One record per guest across phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp and web chat
Visit history with dates, party sizes, tables and spend where your POS is connected
Dietary needs, allergies and occasions captured from the conversation itself
Seating preferences and free-text notes your team controls
No manual entry step, because the record updates as the conversation happens

WHAT SITS IN A GUEST RECORD

Every field exists because a host or a manager asked for it during service, not because a data model needed filling in.

Name, phone, email and preferred contact channel
Every past and upcoming booking, including cancellations and no-shows
Allergies and dietary requirements, carried onto the booking automatically
Occasions: birthdays, anniversaries and the ones your team wrote down last time
Table and seating preferences
Deposit history, where a booking was scored by Smart Deposits
Team notes, timestamped and attributed

HOW THE RECORD REACHES YOUR TEAM

The record is attached to the booking, so nobody has to go looking for it. Opening tonight's book shows the party, the notes and the flags together.

Your morning recap lists the guests arriving that day with anything the team should know before service. Large parties and guests with allergies are flagged rather than buried. Il Caminetto runs more than 500 calls a month through this, and every one of those callers attaches to a record whether they booked or not.

THE DATA IS YOURS

Your guest list is the asset. Fork Time holds it on your behalf and exports it in full, in a standard format, whenever you ask. There is no charge for leaving and no reduced export that keeps the useful fields behind.

We think a reservation platform that makes your guest data hard to take with you has told you what it thinks the relationship is worth.

BEST FOR

Restaurants where regulars matter and the person who remembers them is not always on shift. Venues carrying allergy and occasion detail that currently lives on paper. Operators running more than one site who want the same guest recognised at both.

WHAT GUEST RECORDS DO NOT DO

It does not run marketing campaigns. There is no segmentation builder, no automated email sequence, no loyalty scheme and no attribution reporting. A venue whose growth plan is campaign-led needs a marketing platform alongside Fork Time or instead of it.

It also does not invent history. A guest record is built from bookings and conversations that ran through Fork Time, so the first month is thinner than the sixth. Existing guest data imports at onboarding, and what it cannot fill in, it leaves blank rather than guessing.