Christmas Menu on SevenRooms: Sell a Prepaid Christmas Eve Dinner at Booking

On December 24 and 31, an empty table is expensive. The menu is fixed, the produce is bought in advance, and the kitchen is staffed for a full service. A no-show that night is revenue you will never recover.

The good news: SevenRooms lets you sell your Christmas menu directly inside the booking widget, with a menu choice for each guest and either prepayment or a card guarantee. The result: fewer no-shows, a kitchen that knows exactly how many menus to prepare, and late cancellations that no longer cost you anything.

In this guide, we show you step by step how to set up a prepaid Christmas Eve dinner on SevenRooms, using the features available at the end of 2026.

How to sell a Christmas menu on SevenRooms

The most reliable method relies on two native SevenRooms building blocks, available on every account:

• The "Menu" Upgrade (Online Sales > Upgrades): the festive menu itself, with its name, price, detailed description and photo.
• A dedicated Access Rule (Settings > Availability > Access Rules): the bookable time slots for the evening, the mandatory Upgrade and the payment policy.

The guest picks a December 24 slot, selects one menu per diner, then pays or leaves a card guarantee according to the policy you chose. Two variants are possible, detailed below:

• Option A, prepaid menu: the Upgrade carries a price, collected at booking.
• Option B, card guarantee: the Upgrade has no price, and the Access Rule stores the card with an automatic charge for late cancellations.

Why an Upgrade rather than the Menus pre-order module? The Menus module is still in beta and carries no price. The Upgrade centralises price, visual and description, and works today on your booking widget.

Step 1: create the "Christmas menu" Upgrade

In the web portal: Online Sales > Upgrades. Start from a template or build your Upgrade from scratch.

A dedicated category. Upgrades are organised by category, and it is the whole category that you then attach to the Access Rule. So create a "Christmas Eve menu" category that contains only your festive menus, and tick the option to display the category name in the widget so guests understand what they are choosing. Set it as a required category (Required):

• Minimum quantity: Restricted to number of guests in party, i.e. one menu per diner.
• Maximum quantity: the same value. A table of 4 chooses exactly 4 menus.

The Upgrade itself:

• Name: "Christmas Eve Menu – 4 courses". This is what the guest reads.
• Price: a fixed price (for example €145) for option A, or "€0" / "Don't Show Price" for option B.
• Description: the menu course by course, with the main allergens and what is included (glass of champagne, petits fours…).
• Image: a beautiful photo of a dish, in a rectangular format, displayed at 175 × 130 px, under 1 MB.
• Reservation Tags: automatically apply a "Christmas Eve" tag to spot these tables at a glance and make reporting easier.
• Inventory Management (optional): cap the number of menus you can sell, for example for a limited-quantity truffle menu.

Offering several menus? Create one Upgrade per menu in the same category: "Christmas Eve Menu", "Vegetarian Menu", "Kids Menu". Guests split their choices freely, as long as the total matches the party size. You know your quantities per menu from the moment of booking.

Note: Lead Times are only available for optional categories. For a required category, manage the cut-off date through the Access Rule's booking window (step 2).

Step 2: create the dedicated Access Rule for Christmas Eve

Automatic Access Rules follow your usual services. For a Christmas Eve dinner, create a manual Access Rule, designed for holidays and special experiences. In Settings > Availability > Access Rules:

• Dates and slots: December 24 evening only (and/or December 31). With two sittings, create both slots (7:00 pm and 9:30 pm, for example).
• Party size and cover limit: set them to what the kitchen can deliver on a single menu.
• Booking Window: open reservations early (from early November) and set the online cut-off to the lead time you need for supplier orders, for example 5 days before.
• Selectable Upgrades: Edit, search for the "Christmas Eve menu" category, then Done and Save. This link makes the menu choice mandatory when booking.
• Guest-Facing Display: slot label ("Christmas Eve – 4-course menu"), title, long description and photo. This is what the guest reads when clicking the time.
• Payment and Policy: see step 3, depending on the option you choose.

Tip: make sure your standard Access Rules don't also offer a "regular" booking on those nights, otherwise some guests will book without a menu or payment. Don't use Blackout Dates for this: they shut down all online booking for the day, Christmas Eve included.

Step 3, option A: charge for the menu at booking

Prerequisite: an active payment gateway connected to SevenRooms.

With a fixed-price Upgrade, the amount is added to the guest's basket at booking: a table of 4 choosing 4 menus at €145 pays €580. In the Access Rule, open Payment and Policy > Edit, untick "Follow Shift Settings for Payment & Policy" and choose "Charge credit card at time of booking".

You can also apply taxes, service charge or tip there. Be careful: if your price is displayed tax-inclusive (the norm in France), don't add VAT on top.

The card is also saved. Since July 2026 (the Charge & Save Card feature, on by default), a card charged at booking is also stored on the reservation. Your team can therefore charge it later, for an extra for example. Two limits: that later charge is always manual, and the card remains usable for 7 days after the reservation; beyond that, you need to send a payment link.

Cancellation and refunds:

• Cancellation by the guest: possible online depending on your "guest can modify/cancel" setting (never, or up to a cut-off time). The refund follows the Access Rule's Automatic Refund setting.
• Modification by the guest: not possible online once a payment or a paid Upgrade has been taken. The guest is asked to call the restaurant, so brief your front desk.
• Modification by your team: possible, but refunds and top-ups are handled manually.

Example policy: "Full refund up to 7 days before Christmas Eve. After that, the menu amount is non-refundable."

Step 3, option B: a card guarantee instead of prepayment

You don't want to charge for the menu in advance, but you want protection against last-minute cancellations? This is the most common variant for restaurants with a loyal clientele.

• In the Upgrade, don't set a price: choose "€0" or "Don't Show Price". The menu then informs the guest and lets you count covers per menu, without collecting anything.
• In the Access Rule, open Payment and Policy, untick "Follow Shift Settings" and choose "Require credit card during booking with no deposit". The guest leaves a card guarantee without being charged.
• Enable the automatic charge: in Automatic Cancellation / No-Show Charge, select Automatic Charge, enter the amount (per person or per reservation, for example €145 per person, i.e. the menu price) and the limit, for example 48 hours before arrival.

In practice: if the guest cancels more than 48 hours ahead, nothing is charged. If they cancel less than 48 hours ahead, or don't show up, the card is charged automatically as soon as the reservation moves to Cancelled or No-show. If you leave "No Charge", your team can still charge the card manually for up to 7 days after the reservation.

Crucial point: the amount and the deadline must appear in black and white in your cancellation policy, shown to the guest at booking and repeated if they cancel. A charge the guest did not clearly accept is the first cause of chargebacks. Write it in Settings > Guest-Facing Language > Policies. Example: "Your card is requested as a guarantee for your December 24 reservation. No amount is charged at booking. Any cancellation less than 48 hours before your reservation time, or any no-show, will result in an automatic charge of €145 per person."

Step 4: put the offer online and track bookings

Promote the offer:

• In the booking widget: the Christmas Eve slots appear with their label and photo as soon as the Access Rule is active.
• As a showcase (optional): create an Experience Offer in Online Sales > Offers, linked to the Access Rule. You get a landing page in your own style, visible in the Experiences tab of the new widget, with a link to share.
• On your website: a "Christmas Eve" banner on the homepage pointing to that link.
• By email and social media: a dedicated campaign, your Instagram stories, a QR code on December bills.

What your team sees:

• The "Christmas Eve" tag applied by the Upgrade lets you filter these reservations in the list.
• Each reservation shows the menus chosen and their quantity. Total them per menu a few days ahead to plan supplier orders and prep.
• If you enabled inventory management on an Upgrade, it automatically disappears from the widget once the limit is reached: no overselling.

Best practices and common mistakes

• Test before going live. Make a real booking in the widget, with menu choice, payment or card guarantee, then cancel it, and check the charge or refund. It is the only way to see what the guest experiences.
• Align the three deadlines: online booking cut-off, free-cancellation limit and the deadline stated in the cancellation policy. Three different dates mean three sources of confusion.
• Keep your texts consistent: same price, same description and same cancellation amount on the Upgrade, the Access Rule, the cancellation policy and your website.
• Avoid "blind" channels: on a paid offer, don't allow booking through channels that don't display the description (TheFork, for example). Otherwise the guest pays without knowing what for.
• Brief your front desk: guests who paid for a menu can't change their booking online and will call.
• Think upselling: add a second, optional category of Upgrades (champagne on arrival, wine pairing) on the same Access Rule.
• Duplicate for December 31: once Christmas Eve runs smoothly, copy the Access Rule, create the December 31 menu Upgrade, and New Year's Eve is ready in minutes. The mechanics stay the same for Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.
• Start early: guests book their Christmas Eve dinner from November. An offer that goes online in mid-December is revenue left to competitors.

SevenRooms Christmas menu: frequently asked questions

Need help setting up your holiday offer on SevenRooms?

A well-configured prepaid Christmas Eve dinner means a full house, near-zero no-shows and a kitchen that knows exactly what to prepare. But between Access Rules, Upgrades, card guarantees, cancellation policies and the booking widget, the settings quickly intertwine, and a mistake is paid for the same evening.

māhie is an agency specialised in restaurants and hospitality, with deep SevenRooms expertise. We work every day with restaurant groups in Paris and beyond on setting up and running their tools. For your year-end holidays, we can:

• set up your Christmas Eve offer from A to Z: Menu Upgrade, dedicated Access Rule, prepayment or card guarantee, cancellation policy;
• audit your existing setup before bookings open, to avoid unpleasant surprises;
• integrate the offer into your website (Webflow, WordPress) and set up conversion tracking, so you know how many bookings each campaign generates;
• train your teams to handle prepaid reservations, cancellation charges and refunds;
• prepare your launch email campaigns, GDPR-compliant.

Want your Christmas Eve offer online this week? Contact māhie: we review your setup together and propose the right support.