Restaurants
At twenty to ten the only thing your visitor wants is who is still serving.
Let a visitor at 21:40 see which of your sites is still serving, and book or order from that one rather than the nearest one.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
Sites you run yourself in more than one format: full restaurants, a bar with a smaller kitchen, a few franchised branches trading under your name, and delivery kitchens with no dining room to visit at all.
Why a generic map falls short
A pin on a map answers a question about geography when the diner is asking one about time. The nearest branch is the wrong answer if it stopped seating at nine, and the site two streets further along is the right one because it serves until eleven.
What visitors need to do
- Put open now first, because a closed restaurant is not a result
- Say when the kitchen stops, which is almost never when the doors close
- Send a booking to the reservation system that specific site runs, not to a group form
- Keep delivery kitchens out of the walk-in results and show the area they cover
How Handled covers it
- Opening hours per site with an open-now filter, so the first thing a hungry visitor sees is what is actually trading
- Live open, closing soon and opens tomorrow status in the result card and the map popup
- Custom fields for last orders, kitchen close and the days brunch runs
- A book or order button per location with its own label, link and colour, for a group running more than one reservation system
- Service areas with a coverage radius for delivery kitchens, which are a zone rather than an address
Not every restaurants business is the same
Quick service and counter sites
A counter site lives or dies on hours. The drive-through usually runs later than the dining room, breakfast stops at a time nobody remembers, and the visitor decides in well under a minute. Hours per site with an open-now filter, plus a custom field for the late window and the breakfast cutoff, answers the whole question before anyone scrolls.
Casual dining that takes bookings
Here the visitor wants a table, not a pin. Groups rarely run one reservation system across every site, so the button on each result has to point at whatever that restaurant books through. Last orders matters more than closing time: a kitchen that stops at ten in a room that shuts at midnight is a wasted journey and a bad review.
Delivery kitchens with no dining room
A delivery kitchen has an address nobody should visit and a catchment everybody cares about. Put it on the map as an ordinary pin and someone will turn up at an industrial unit. A service area with a coverage radius describes it honestly, and a tag keeps it out of the results for anyone looking for somewhere to sit down.
Franchised sites trading under your name
The franchisee sets their own hours, runs their own offers, and changes both without telling head office. That is a permissions problem before it is a mapping one. Team roles let an operator fix their own site without touching the rest of the estate, and Sheets sync with change review means head office reads a change before the public does.
Setting it up
1. Split the estate by format before you import anything
List every site as dining room, counter, bar with a kitchen, delivery kitchen or franchise, and make that the first tag. It decides what a visitor can filter on later, and it is far cheaper to agree now than to retag ninety sites once the locator is live.
2. Load two clocks, not one
Door hours go into opening hours so the open-now filter is truthful. Last orders, kitchen close and the days brunch runs go into custom fields, because they are different numbers that change on different weeks. A site that shows open with a closed kitchen is the failure mode to design out.
3. Point every button at the system that site actually uses
Each location gets its own button label and link, so the Islington site goes to its booking platform and the one you acquired last year goes to the platform it came with. One group-level enquiry form is what pushes a diner back to a search engine.
4. Draw the delivery catchment, then search as a diner would
Give each delivery kitchen a coverage radius rather than a pin, and then run the searches your customers run. Check that a walk-in filter never returns a kitchen, and that a postcode inside the radius returns one.
5. Read the unmet demand rate after the first two weeks
The analytics page reports the share of searches that returned nothing. In this trade it is a site-selection signal: repeated searches for a town you do not trade in, or for late evening in an area where everything of yours shuts at nine.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Questions we get asked
Can diners filter to the restaurants that are still serving at the moment they search?
Yes. Opening hours are held per site and the open-now filter sits on the results, so a visitor at 21:40 sees what is actually trading, with closing soon and opens tomorrow shown on the rest.
Our kitchen stops an hour before the doors close, so how do we publish last orders?
Door hours go into opening hours so the open-now filter stays truthful, and last orders goes into a custom field shown on the result card. They are different numbers at most sites, and the second one is the one that decides the journey.
Can each restaurant point at the reservation system that site actually books through?
Yes. Every location carries its own button label, link and colour, so one site can book through the platform it has always used and a restaurant you acquired last year can keep the platform it came with.
How do we keep a delivery-only kitchen out of results for people looking for a table?
Give the kitchen a service area with a coverage radius instead of a pin, and tag it as delivery so a walk-in filter never returns it. Otherwise somebody turns up at an industrial unit expecting to be seated.
What does a restaurant group pay for Handled, and are map costs included?
Plans start at $19 per month with a 7-day free trial that needs no card, and there is no free plan once the trial ends. Map costs are not included by design: you bring your own Mapbox or Google Maps key, so the provider bills you at their rate rather than us marking it up.
Can a franchisee edit their own restaurant without being able to change the rest of the estate?
Yes. Team roles cover owner, admin and editor, so an operator can correct their own hours and offers and nothing else. Google Sheets sync with change review means head office reads a change before the public does.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.