Industry
Quandoo Is Closing: What UK Restaurants Should Do Before 30 September
Quandoo stops handling bookings on 30 September 2026. The dates, getting your guest data out, the replacements compared, and what it does to your phone.
Quandoo is winding down. If your bookings come through it, the date to write on the wall is 30 September 2026. After that the platform stops handling reservations. Here is what is actually happening, the order to deal with it in, and the one consequence most restaurants will not plan for.
1. The three dates that matter
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 30 September 2026 | Last day new or existing bookings are handled through Quandoo. Your real deadline. |
| 31 December 2026 | Website, app and supporting infrastructure come down. Support runs until then. |
| Final six months | Service fees waived, so running a replacement in parallel costs you nothing extra. |
Bookings already in the diary will be honoured, and venues stay listed until the platform goes. Nobody is going to turn up to a locked door because of this. The risk here is quieter than that.
2. Get your guest data out first
This is the only part that becomes impossible later. Once the infrastructure is switched off at the end of December, whatever you have not exported is gone. Names, contact details, booking history, the record of who your regulars are.
Ask Quandoo support for a full export while support is still running. Do it before you choose a replacement, not after. The export has a hard expiry. Choosing a booking system can wait a fortnight.
Two things worth checking when it arrives. First, that it actually contains contact details and not only booking counts. Second, where you stand on using those details for marketing. Under UK PECR rules, a booking made through a third-party platform does not by itself give you permission to email or text that person later. If you want a list you can actually use, start collecting your own opt-in now, in your confirmation messages and at the table.
3. Then pick a replacement, and pick it on running cost
There is no shortage of options. The right one depends on where your covers actually come from.
| Option | Model | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Leron | Flat monthly fee, no commission per cover | Independents who want the diary, the phone and the email handled by one system, and who would rather not add a job to the rota |
| ResDiary | Subscription | Mid-sized or growing restaurants that want deep table management |
| resOS | Free tier, commission-free paid plans | A single site that wants a booking widget and a diary without a monthly bill that stings |
| OpenTable / TheFork | Commission per cover | Venues that genuinely rely on being discovered by strangers |
| Seatly, Tableo, Eat App | Flat monthly fee | Somewhere in between, with varying depth of table management |
A rule of thumb. If most of your bookings already come from people who know you, pay a flat fee and keep the covers. If you rely on discovery, a marketplace is buying you something real, and you should price that honestly rather than resenting the commission.
Whichever way you go, you can put the new booking widget on your own website immediately, in parallel, before your Quandoo arrangement formally ends. There is no reason to wait for September.
4. The part most restaurants will miss
Swapping one diary for another is the obvious job. It is not the whole job.
Quandoo was not only a booking system. It was a discovery channel, a consumer app with its own audience, sending you people who were not looking for you specifically. When it closes, that demand does not evaporate. It moves. It goes to Google, to your own website, and to the phone.
So the practical effect of a marketplace closing is that more of your bookings arrive as phone calls. Phone calls arrive at the worst possible moment. Mid service. During a rush. When the one person who knows how the diary works is carrying three plates.
A booking that rang and got a busy tone does not appear in any report. You will not see it in your new system’s dashboard. It simply does not exist, and the covers quietly do not turn up. That is the failure mode worth planning for, and almost nobody does, because it leaves no trace. We put numbers on it in what a missed call actually costs a restaurant.
5. What we would do, and where Leron fits
We build the software, so read this section knowing that. It is also the reason we noticed the problem in the first place: we run the phone line for a restaurant on Swansea Bay, and the calls that ring out during service are the single most expensive thing that happens there.
Leron is a front desk that runs itself. There are three honest ways to use it, and only one of them is a full migration.
As your booking system. The diary, the table plan, the widget on your website, confirmations by text, no commission on covers. If you are replacing Quandoo anyway, this is the version where you replace it with something that also answers the phone.
As an add-on to the system you already chose. Plenty of restaurants have just signed with ResDiary or resOS and do not want to move again. Fine. Keep it. Leron answers the phone and the inbox, takes the booking in conversation, and puts it where your team already looks. You get the calls covered without touching the diary you have.
As the bit nobody else does. Out of hours, mid rush, Sunday afternoon when you are closed and someone is trying to book a table for Friday. Those calls are either answered by a person or they are lost.
Three things about it are worth saying plainly, because they are the reasons people pick us over a cheaper answering service.
It is self driving. You do not operate it. There is no rota for it, no queue to clear, no dashboard someone has to remember to check. It answers, it books, it confirms, it follows up. The point of the product is that nobody on your team gains a job.
The website is included. If your site is old, slow or built by someone who has stopped answering emails, we design and build you a proper one, at no cost, with booking on it. The reason is not generosity. Direct bookings are the thing that replaces the marketplace you are losing, and a bad website is usually what stops them.
It remembers your guests, and does something with it. Every call and every booking builds a picture of who actually comes in: how often, what they book, who has not been back since March. Leron proposes the campaign for you. The forty regulars who always book Sunday lunch and have gone quiet. The couples who came in for Valentine’s last year, four weeks before the next one. You approve it, it goes out. That is the part a booking system does not do, and it is the part that pays for itself when a discovery channel disappears.
6. A realistic order of work
You do not need a project plan for this. You need four things in this order.
- Request the Quandoo export. Today, while support is running. Check it has contact details.
- Put a booking link on your Google Business Profile and at the top of your own site. Free, and it catches the people who would have tapped the app. This is the highest return item on the list.
- Choose the replacement and run it in parallel through August and September, while Quandoo’s fees are waived.
- Sort the phone before the changeover, not after. Call volume goes up when a marketplace closes, and it goes up at exactly the moment you are least ready.
If your phones are genuinely covered, take the checklist above, keep your money, and good luck with the switch. If the phone is already the thing that suffers during service, that is the conversation to have with us. Restaurants in South Wales, there is a version of this written for you.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly does Quandoo stop taking bookings?
30 September 2026 is the last day new or existing bookings are handled through Quandoo. The website, app and supporting infrastructure come down on 31 December 2026, and service fees are waived for the final six months.
What happens to bookings already in my Quandoo diary?
They are honoured, and venues stay listed until the platform closes. Nobody is turning up to a locked door because of this. The thing at real risk is your guest data, which goes when the infrastructure goes.
What is the best Quandoo alternative in the UK?
It depends on where your covers come from. If most guests already know you, pick a flat-fee system and keep the commission. If you genuinely rely on being discovered by strangers, a marketplace such as OpenTable or TheFork is buying you something real. Leron covers both the diary and the phone, and works as an add-on if you keep the booking system you have.
Do I have to switch before 30 September?
No, but there is no reason to wait. Quandoo has waived its service fees for the final six months, so you can run a replacement alongside it and switch properly once the new system is bedded in.
Can I email my old Quandoo guests once I have exported them?
Not automatically. Under UK PECR rules a booking made through a third-party platform does not on its own give you consent to market to that person. Check what the export says about consent, and get your own opt-in at the table or in your confirmation messages.