Description

Restaurant
Reservation Requests is a WordPress plugin designed for restaurants
that want a practical reservation request workflow with manual
approval.

Instead of using a
complex real-time booking engine, this plugin gives restaurant owners
a clean and flexible system where customers can submit a reservation
request through a modern step-by-step frontend form, and the
restaurant can review, confirm, or cancel it from WordPress or
directly from the email notification.

This makes it ideal
for restaurants that prefer a request -> review ->
confirm/cancel workflow instead of automatic inventory-based table
booking.

The customer
experience is simple and mobile-friendly. Guests choose a date,
choose an available time slot, select the number of people, enter
name, email, and phone, add optional notes, and fill in optional
extra fields. After submission, the customer stays on the same page
and sees a configurable success message.

The plugin is built
for real restaurant use and includes flexible scheduling options. You
can define separate opening hours for lunch and dinner, configure
multiple time ranges per day, leave specific ranges empty to disable
bookings for that range, leave a day empty to mark it as closed,
generate time slots automatically based on a configurable slot step,
set a global lead time in minutes, and limit how many days ahead
customers can request a reservation.

You can also control
how many guests can be selected in the form by setting minimum
people, maximum people, and optionally enabling a 20+ option for
large groups. This is useful if you want standard requests to stay
within a specific range while still allowing larger group requests to
be handled as a special case.

When a new
reservation request is submitted, the restaurant receives an admin
email containing the request details and action links. From that
email, the admin can confirm the reservation with one click or cancel
the reservation with one click. This keeps the workflow fast and
practical without forcing the restaurant owner to open the dashboard
every time. The customer can also receive automatic status emails
when the request is received, confirmed, or cancelled.

The plugin includes
a dedicated WordPress-native admin area for reservation management.
You can view all requests, open any request to see the full details,
review a compact Extras summary in the list view, and use the
dedicated metabox in the request detail screen for extra fields.

A major feature of
the plugin is the ability to add up to 5 configurable extra fields to
the reservation form. For each extra field you can define whether it
is enabled, set the field label, choose the field type (text,
textarea, select, or checkbox), mark it as required, and define
options for select fields.

Each extra field can
also have its own minimum advance hours rule. For example, you can
create a field such as Book a Cake and make it available only if the
reservation is made at least 24 hours in advance. If the booking is
too close to the reservation time, the field is still visible but it
becomes disabled, an optional unavailable message can be shown, and
server-side validation prevents forced submission. This is especially
useful for options that require preparation time and should not be
selectable at the last minute.

The plugin includes
editable HTML email templates for all key reservation events: admin
notification for new requests, customer request received email,
customer confirmed email, customer cancelled email, and the optional
review reminder email. Templates can be edited directly from the
WordPress admin area using the built-in HTML editor.

The plugin supports
placeholders for dynamic content such as name, email, phone, people,
date, time, notes, confirm URL, cancel URL, review URL, logo, and
extra field labels and values. This gives you full control over email
communication while keeping everything practical and reusable.

You can also
customize the email appearance with branding options such as HTML
email wrapper, wrapper width, background color, container color, text
color, font family, optional logo, logo link, logo alt text, and
configurable logo max height. The logo placeholder is rendered
exactly where you place it in the email template, which gives you
better control over email branding and layout.

The plugin includes
an optional review reminder system. After a confirmed reservation has
taken place, it can automatically send a follow-up email asking the
customer to leave a review. You can configure whether the reminder is
enabled, the delay in hours, the review URL, the review email
subject, and the review email body. This is useful for linking
customers to platforms such as Google, Tripadvisor, or Trustpilot.

The shortcode form
also includes built-in admin color controls, allowing you to
customize the frontend appearance without editing CSS manually.
Available settings include form background color, text color, heading
or accent color, input background color, input text color, input
border color, button background color, button text color, success
message background color, and success message text color. These
styles are applied only to the shortcode output, so they do not
affect the rest of your WordPress theme.

To avoid confusion,
this plugin is not a live capacity engine, not a real-time table
inventory system, not an automatic table management platform, and not
a booking engine with seat locking. It is intentionally designed as a
reservation request plus manual approval system for restaurants that
prefer a lighter and clearer workflow.

This plugin is ideal
for restaurants, bistros, cafes, pizzerias, small food businesses,
and agencies building restaurant websites. It is especially useful
for businesses that want a lightweight reservation request system
without a heavy booking platform.

Features

• Step-by-step frontend reservation request form
• Lunch and dinner opening hours support
• Multiple time ranges per day
• Automatic slot generation
• Configurable slot step
• Lead time control
• Max days ahead control
• Minimum and maximum people settings
• Optional 20+ people option
• WordPress-native admin request management
• One-click confirm/cancel links in email notifications
• Editable HTML email templates
• Placeholder support
• Optional logo inside emails
• Email branding settings
• Optional review reminder email
• Up to 5 configurable extra fields
• Text / textarea / select / checkbox field types
• Minimum advance hours rule per extra field
• Optional unavailable message per field
• Frontend form color customization
• Scoped CSS styling
• Mobile-friendly layout
• Manual approval workflow
• Documentation included

Requirements

• WordPress 6.2 or higher
• PHP 8.1 or higher
• A working WordPress installation
• Email sending enabled on the server (an SMTP plugin may be recommended depending on hosting)

Instructions

1. Upload and activate the plugin in WordPress.
2. Go to Reservations -> Settings and configure the plugin.
3. Set recipient email, people limits, slot settings, opening hours, email templates, extra fields, and review reminder options.
4. Add the shortcode [restaurant_reservation_requests] to any page.
5. Test a reservation request from the frontend.
6. Manage incoming requests from the WordPress admin area or directly from the email action links.