Restaurant Private Hire on SevenRooms: Event Management A to Z

In November and December, requests for corporate dinners, seminars and private hire arrive by the dozen: a phone call, an email, an Instagram DM, a "there are 28 of us, do you have a room?". Many restaurants still handle all of it by hand, with a Word quote and a spreadsheet. Dates overlap, deposits get lost.

SevenRooms' Event Management module exists to make restaurant private hire on SevenRooms a repeatable process: your rooms become bookable online (or on request), with menu, deposit, cancellation terms and a summary sheet for your team. This guide covers the module from A to Z, with one running example: the year-end corporate dinner.

Note: Event Management is an add-on to SevenRooms, separate from the base subscription. Two features covered here are in beta: Scheduled Deposits and Event Summaries. We flag it each time.

Restaurant private hire on SevenRooms: what Event Management does

Event Management turns your rooms into bookable offers. The guest sees your spaces in a dedicated tab of the reservation widget, picks a date and a menu, then pays a deposit, just like a standard reservation. The module covers Spaces, menus and add-ons through Upgrades, minimum spend, fees and deposits, Booking and Cancellation Policies, an Event Management Calendar and dashboards.

Its limits, according to the documentation: no individual dish selection per guest (package selection is supported), no event availability on Google, and no automated guest reminder to finalize a menu.

A sorting rule: if your festive menu is optional and open to every table size, it is not an Event Space, it is an Offer. Event Management is for groups with their own rules: set menu, minimum spend, deposit.

Defining your spaces: Spaces. Everything starts with the list of Spaces, meaning what you actually sell. For each one you set:

• Space Name: the guest-facing name, the one from your website ("Garden Room", "Mezzanine").
• Capacity: minimum and maximum, seated and standing. If the space always has a minimum spend, set the minimum capacity to 1: a small group willing to pay the minimum should be able to book.
• Privacy Level: Entire Venue, Fully Private, Semi Private or Shared Space.
• Booking Method: Directly Bookable for most spaces, Request Only for complex cases such as a full buyout.
• Tables attached to each space, and the checkbox "Event bookings in this Space reserve all selected Tables": tick it for a private room (one party at a time), leave it empty for group dining in the main room.

Combinable rooms. If two rooms can be hired separately or together, create three Spaces: room 1, room 2 and a "combined room". The system automatically takes the combined space offline as soon as one of the two is booked.

In the Space Profile, prepare a one-to-two sentence description, 3 to 4 photos of the room (no food shots), the amenities and a single PDF gathering all your menus.

Menus, minimum spend and deposits: from selection to payment

Menus and add-ons: Menu Selection. Menu selection runs through Upgrades (Marketing > Upgrades). Create your menus first, then link them to the space in the setup flow.

Three common patterns for a corporate dinner:

• Packages to choose from: "Bistro Menu", "Signature Menu", "Prestige Menu". Minimum and maximum quantity set to 1, so the guest cannot mix packages. Detail what each package includes.
• Single prepaid menu: PDF in the Space Profile, no Upgrade, and a Flat Rate per Guest Deposit at the menu price (for example €75 per person), stated in the Booking Policy.
• Menu with a variant: an Upgrade category with a "meat" Upgrade and a "vegetarian" Upgrade, each with its price. The guest splits the party between them, and you collect the full amount.

If a deposit or minimum spend is already required, leave menus at €0: they act as a choice, not an extra payment. For undecided clients, add an option such as "Decide later" or "Speak to someone at the venue to finalize my menu".

Add-ons are also Upgrades: welcome champagne, drinks package, corkage, projector. To alert the kitchen about a specific menu, create a Reservation Tag category, add the relevant people as Followers, then attach the tag to the Upgrade.

Limit: no dish selection per guest. For a seminar with individual pre-orders, the documentation mentions the SetMenu integration, otherwise an email exchange from the reservation.

Payments: three blocks. In the payment settings you configure minimum spend, fees and deposit.

Minimum spend. Set it per reservation or per guest, without mixing the two. It can vary by Space, Availability Period (lunch, dinner, seating) and day of the week, and even by party size. Example: a 20-seat private room, €1,500 tax-inclusive for a weekday lunch, €2,500 in the evening, €3,500 on a December Friday night. For December, use Seasons: they let you change availability, minimums, deposits, policies and Upgrades for a period without touching your usual setup.

Additional fees. Service Charge, Admin Fee and Room Rental Fee show up in the Other Fees section. Careful: they are display only, SevenRooms does not collect them at booking. The Admin Fee cannot be used to pass on transaction fees either.

Deposit. By default it is 50% of the minimum spend. You can switch to a flat amount and set exceptions by Space. Always collect something for group dining, even a small amount: it limits last-minute cancellations.

To get VAT on the confirmation email, contact SevenRooms support: it is enabled on request.

Scheduled Deposits (beta).

Beta: Scheduled Deposits are a beta feature, enabled on request for some venues. If the settings do not appear, go through your SevenRooms representative.

The guest pays an initial deposit at booking, then one or more automatic payments are charged before the event. Example: a corporate dinner booked in October for 18 December, €3,000 tax-inclusive minimum spend.

• At booking: 30% (€900).
• 30 days before: 40% (€1,200).
• 7 days before: the remaining balance.

Setup: in Set Deposit Requirements of the payments wizard, turn on Enable balance collection of the minimum spend under Charged Later, then add your Payment Tiers (days before the event, percentage or full remaining balance).

At checkout the guest sees "Due Today" and each upcoming payment with its date, and must agree to the future charges. They get a reminder 48 hours before each payment. If a charge fails, SevenRooms retries three times over 12 hours, then sends the guest a link to update their card.

Limits stated by SevenRooms:

• not available with the Save Card payment type (use Charge Card with a €0 deposit);
• deposits based on per-person menu pricing are not supported;
• fees, taxes, gratuity, service charge and room rental are excluded from the calculation: collect them separately;
• an upcoming payment cannot be cancelled or waived individually, and the guest cannot pay the balance early.

If the date or party size changes, everything is recalculated. You can also collect a one-off payment from the reservation slide-out.

Tiered cancellation policies and Event Summaries (beta)

Event Management Policies. Event Management Booking and Cancellation Policies work like those of your standard reservations. By default SevenRooms provides a "Default Events Booking Policy" and a "Default Events Cancellation Policy": edit them to cover most of your cases, then create exceptions (+ Add Exception) by Space, Availability Period or party size.

For tiered refunds, there are two levels:

• With Scheduled Deposits (beta): a tiered cancellation policy automatically calculates the refund based on when the guest cancels. SevenRooms' example: more than 30 days before, 100%; 8 to 30 days, 50%; 7 days or fewer, no refund. Tiers can be set in hours, days, weeks or months.
• Without Scheduled Deposits: you can configure a full refund before a Refund Cutoff Time, but not an automatic partial refund. Set the cutoff at the earliest date (for example two weeks), handle partial refunds manually, and write the rule in your policy.

Tip: set the cutoff at the point where you can no longer refill the room. In December, that is much earlier than in February.

Event Summaries as PDF: the function sheet (beta).

Beta: Event Summaries are available to a limited set of customers only.

An Event Summary is a consolidated view your team can print, save as a PDF or send by email. SevenRooms compares it to banquet event orders, function sheets or run sheets. It gathers: booker details, date, start time and duration, guest count, space and tables, selected menus, Upgrades, allergies, minimum spend, fees, deposits paid and notes.

To open it, click Event Summary at the top right of the event slide-out. The content cannot be customized: it reflects what is entered in the booking. A printed or emailed copy does not update, so regenerate it after any change. Without beta access, manage your function sheets outside SevenRooms and attach them to the reservation.

From first contact to confirmation: request, quote, payment

Here is the full journey for a December corporate dinner.

• 1. The request. Either the guest books a Directly Bookable space straight away, or goes through a Request Only space (full buyout, bespoke event): they submit a request and your team follows up. To be alerted, turn on the "New Request Alert" notification.
• 2. The quote. For bespoke requests, you build the offer with the client, then create the booking from the Calendar in the Event Management tab (Add Event) or through an internal Access Rule time slot.
• 3. The confirmation. The guest receives a confirmation email including minimum spend and additional fees, then a reminder.
• 4. The payment. Deposit at booking, or a paylink if your team entered the event. With the Scheduled Deposits beta, the following payments go out on their own.
• 5. The preparation. Event Summary (if you have access), notifications to the right people through the "Private Event" tag, and tracking of unconverted requests in the dashboard.

The Event Management Dashboard shows requests, booked, completed and cancelled events, with the associated revenue. Check unconverted requests every week.

Corporate dinners and restaurant private hire at year-end: the action plan

December is prepared in September. Here is the order we recommend.

• Open early. SevenRooms advises allowing event bookings at least 6 to 12 months ahead. Check that the Searchable Timeframe (Settings > Reservation Widget > Search & Availability) covers that period.
• Create a "Festive" Season. Higher minimums, year-end menus, bigger deposits, a stricter cancellation policy, for December only.
• Point your website to the Events tab. Replace the contact form or phone number with a link to the Events tab. You can hide the Reservations tab with the URL parameters hideTabs=true and searchTab=group_bookings, and enable the Group Bookings banner.
• Remove old paths. Old Offers, Access Rules and Blocks create duplicates.
• Lock tables already booked (hard assign) before publishing, otherwise the system may remove them.
• Test several dates and party sizes, and use Availability Quick View if a slot does not appear.

Qualifying requests before Event Management: Heep as a complement

Event Management takes over once the project is scoped. But a large share of group requests never reach the module: a WhatsApp message at 11 p.m., an Instagram DM, an email with no date, a missed call during the rush. Before the quote, you need to ask the right questions: how many people, which date, what budget, which contact.

That is where Heep comes in alongside SevenRooms. Heep is an AI for restaurants and hotels that brings WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email into one inbox, sends a WhatsApp or SMS after a missed call, and handles groups and private hire: requests routed by group size and qualified by date, budget, covers and contact. Heep works with SevenRooms and books directly in your software for standard tables.

Your team no longer gets "hi, do you do private hire?", but a scoped request ("24 people, 12 December, €90 per person, contact: HR department"). It then creates the event in the Event Management Calendar or sends the client to the Events tab. One sorts, the other sells and collects.

To go further on payments, read which payment policy to choose and, for festive menus in the main dining room, the prepaid Christmas menu. For add-ons (champagne, equipment), see Upgrades.

Restaurant private hire on SevenRooms: frequently asked questions

Need help setting up private hire on SevenRooms?

Between Spaces, Booking Windows, Seasons, deposits, cancellation policies and Upgrades, a poor setup costs you in December: a clash with a standard reservation, an underpriced deposit, a room guests cannot find. Better to sort it all out before festive requests open.

māhie supports restaurants and hotels on SevenRooms. For your corporate dinners and private hire, we can:

• set up your Event Management program: Spaces, tables, Availability Periods, minimum spend by slot, year-end Seasons;
• configure menus, Upgrades and policies: packages, add-ons, Booking and Cancellation Policies, notifications to the right teams;
• audit what exists: old Offers, Access Rules and Blocks to remove, tables to lock, a test of the module before launch;
• integrate the Events tab into your Webflow or WordPress site, with conversion tracking by channel;
• deploy Heep to qualify group requests received by WhatsApp, Instagram, email or phone, and train your teams.

Discover our SevenRooms expertise or Contact māhie to prepare your festive season.