Private dining software for restaurants, run like the line

Updated September 15, 2026.

Banquette is private dining software for restaurants that runs each private event from the first inquiry to the night: the event contract e-signed on the host’s own page, a menu signed by two chefs, guest RSVPs, the banquet event order (BEO) and the kitchen sheet.

Rehearsal dinners, pharma presentations, wine dinners, holiday parties, the full buyout — the parties that pay for the quiet Tuesdays deserve better than a spreadsheet, a shared inbox, and a contract template with last month’s menu in it. Banquette was built inside a working restaurant, an award-winning one with twenty-six years of private dining.

How does a private event run in Banquette?

Six steps, one book.

1. The inquiry

The call comes in and the office puts the party on the book — date, room, host, count. The database refuses to double-book a room, and a buyout holds them all. We bring in your existing book during onboarding, from a Daily Events Report export (spreadsheet or PDF).

2. The contract, signed on the host’s page

The office drafts the event contract from the party’s record and sends the host a signing link. The host reads the full terms on a private page, types their full name and presses “Adopt & sign”. The terms were fixed by a hash at drafting, and the signature is kept in an evidence record: name, email, time, IP address, browser. The general manager or events manager countersigns, and the party is contracted. The contract carries its payment schedule, and the host’s page shows what is received, still to come or past due. More on the host’s private page.

3. The menu, signed by two chefs

In a restaurant the menu is the product, so the kitchen holds the pen. A party’s menu becomes sellable only when two different chefs have signed it, and each signature is tied to the courses: change a course and the signatures fall away; change the price and they stand. Until both signatures are on, the book refuses the first send of the party’s contract — though a party with no menu yet can still be sent. House menus kept in the Menu Studio go onto a party as a copy, and the copy needs its own signatures. How two-chef menu approval works.

4. The guests, answering for themselves

The host pastes the guest list onto their page, or your office does; it is one list. The office emails each guest a private link under the restaurant’s name, from a banquette.events address. The guest sees the date, the seats and the menu, answers yes or no and, if coming, leaves one note for the kitchen. The host sees that a note was left, never what it says; the kitchen reads every word. Replies do not move the count; it stays the office’s number. See guest RSVPs with no account.

5. The kitchen sheet

The guest count is due 48 hours before the party, reckoned in the restaurant’s own time zone, and the Today board flags any party inside 48 hours that still needs a count. The office locks the count by hand, and a locked count refuses a different number. The day’s kitchen sheet prints from the live book: each party’s menu, the count to cook to (the locked guarantee, or the expected count until then), every dietary note, and ruled lines, because on the line the pen wins. Each party also prints its banquet event order — menu, the count to cook to, outside vendors with load-in times, notes, money, who to call. See BEOs and print-first kitchen sheets, or what a banquet event order is.

6. The night

The sheet goes on the pass in your masthead, one to three parties to a page. A house menu kept in the Menu Studio prints as one letter-page guest sheet with the restaurant’s masthead, no prices and no software branding. The room sets from a floor plan laid out from the count, and staff see the book’s parties on their phones through a one-way calendar feed. Afterwards, the host’s page stays open while a balance or a credit stands, up to a year after the party — and while the money is still moving, each payment or pending installment holds it open another thirty days.

What doesn’t Banquette do for a restaurant yet?

• Take payments: no card processing, online deposits or receipts.
• Connect to your POS, your accounting, or OpenTable, Resy or SevenRooms.
• Ask each guest for an entrée, or seat named guests at tables.
• Run as a native app; it is a web app for any phone browser.
• Sign you up online. Every restaurant starts with a tour.

What does it cost?

Solo is $249 a month for one house and one book: the whole console, the print program, e-signatures and the guest sheet. House is $499 a month for up to three rooms of one property on one book, with the notes reader (in preview): a rules-based parser, not AI, that turns pasted call notes into a draft menu. For now it works against a sample repertoire kept in the browser, not your live book, and writes nothing to it. Flat per property, never a percentage of the room; annual billing runs two months free. See Banquette pricing, Banquette for clubs and resorts for a property with several restaurants and halls, or how Banquette compares with other private dining software.

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