--- title: Your enquiry inbox needs a ticket time description: How fast should a restaurant reply to guest enquiries? A response time standard to set, three numbers to track, and where AI should and shouldn't reply. canonical_url: https://www.askholly.ai/blog/enquiry-response-time/ date: 2026-10-09 column: Front of House last_updated: 2026-10-09 --- # Your enquiry inbox needs a ticket time Kitchens put a clock on every plate. The inbox, where a lot of next week’s covers start, usually runs without one. By the Holly team, 9 October 2026. In Front of House, a column in The Pass, the Holly blog. **In short:** Kitchens time every ticket. The enquiry inbox deserves the same treatment: a standard everyone knows, a named owner on every shift and three numbers on the board. Speed only counts if the reply is right, so anything that needs judgement still goes to a person. At 20:15 on a Saturday, the head chef at Ember Lane can tell you that table 12’s mains have been on for nine minutes. Ask the general manager how long the oldest unanswered guest email has been waiting, and the honest answer is a shrug. Kitchens time tickets because a late plate is obvious. The table looks round, the server hovers, someone asks. A late reply makes no noise at all. Take the guest who asked on Friday about a table for six on Sunday. They are unlikely to chase. More likely they book somewhere that answered, and the email sits in the inbox looking like every other email. The one proper test of this we know of is a few years old, but it still stings. In 2023, Stampede emailed [250 UK and Irish venues](https://qsrmedia.com/research/news/one-out-three-customers-dont-get-reply-their-query-report) a simple question about bringing a birthday cake. A third never replied. Only 22 per cent replied within an hour, and [60 per cent replied within 24 hours](https://stampede.ai/blog/the-hospitality-industry-is-leaving-money-in-their-inbox-industry-insight-report). Put the other way round, two in five took more than a day or never answered. > A late reply makes no noise at all. ## Restaurant enquiries are the cheapest covers you will get this year Trading is not giving anyone much slack. Like-for-like sales at Britain’s managed restaurant groups were up 2.4 per cent in August, but [hospitality has now gone 16 consecutive months without real-terms growth](https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2026/restaurant-sales-revive-but-pubs-soften-in-steady-august-for-hospitality/), according to the NIQ RSM Hospitality Business Tracker. In that climate, an enquiry is the best kind of demand. Nobody had to be persuaded. The guest found you, chose you and asked. The only cost of turning that into a booking is a good reply, sent while they are still deciding. Every other route to a cover, from a paid listing to a voucher, costs more than that. So it is odd how rarely the inbox gets a clock. ## What gets timed gets fixed A ticket time works for three reasons. It is visible, someone owns it, and everyone knows the standard. The inbox usually has none of the three. It is shared, so it belongs to whoever has a minute, and the standard is “as soon as we can”. If nobody owns the inbox, nobody is ever late. Start by putting three numbers on the board next to the covers: - **Time to first useful reply.** Not the automatic “thanks, we’ll be in touch”. The first message that answers the question or moves the booking on. - **Unanswered at close.** How many guest messages are still waiting when the last table leaves. - **Enquiries that became bookings.** Of the messages that asked about a date, how many ended up in the book. Then set a standard your team can actually hold. Guests already have one. In a CGA by NIQ and Reputation survey of 755 British consumers, [two-thirds said they expect a reply from a venue within a few hours](https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2025/cga-reputation-study-reveals-ai-and-economic-pressures-driving-new-uk-consumer-habits-in-hospitality/). Ours would be a useful reply within 15 minutes when the restaurant is open, and before 10:00 the next morning when it isn’t. And give each shift a named owner, the way the pass has a head chef. For the busiest stretch of the year, the Christmas party season, we wrote a separate [field guide to the first reply](/blog/christmas-party-enquiries/). Here is the trade-off we won’t pretend away. At 20:15 on a Saturday, we would rather your best server stayed on the floor than answered an email. The guests in the room come first. A standard of 15 minutes in service means somebody checks the inbox between courses, not that somebody stands behind the bar typing. It also means the guest who messages at 22:40 still waits until morning. For a lot of restaurants that is the real gap: the late evenings, the weekends and the hours after close. ## A fast wrong answer is worse than a slow right one A plate that goes out on time and wrong comes back. Replies work the same way. Tell a guest a table is free when it isn’t, guess at an allergen, or quote last year’s deposit terms, and the speed made it worse. That is why we measure time to first *useful* reply, and why some messages should never get a quick answer from whoever is nearest. Complaints, allergies the menu doesn’t cover, discounts and anything with a refund in it belong with a person who can decide, with the whole thread in front of them. Guests draw the same line. In Toast’s research with UK diners, published last week, 47 per cent said the thing that would most increase their trust in restaurant AI is [knowing they can easily reach a human](https://www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2026/10/06/diners-want-more-ai-powered-personalisation-in-restaurants-research-finds/) if something goes wrong. A quarter named resolving complaints as one of the least appropriate jobs for AI. This is also where we think AI earns its place in front of house, and where it has to be held back. We built Holly to give the first reply in seconds, at any hour, from your own menus, policies and availability, and to hand anything that needs judgement to your team with the conversation attached. It is there to cover the hours your team can’t, on website chat, email and [WhatsApp](/whatsapp/). It should never improvise an answer about allergens or a discount you haven’t agreed. An AI that does is just a faster way to send a wrong reply. Tonight, after the last table, open the inbox and write down one number: how long the oldest unanswered guest message has been waiting. Put it on the board by the pass. Do the same tomorrow, and every night for a week. By Sunday you will know whether you have an inbox problem, and you won’t need anyone to sell you the answer. ## Sources 1. QSR Media, “One out of three customers don’t get a reply to their query: report”, 30 May 2023. [qsrmedia.com](https://qsrmedia.com/research/news/one-out-three-customers-dont-get-reply-their-query-report) 2. Stampede, “The hospitality industry is leaving money in their inbox”, 17 May 2023. [stampede.ai](https://stampede.ai/blog/the-hospitality-industry-is-leaving-money-in-their-inbox-industry-insight-report) 3. NIQ, “Restaurant sales revive but pubs soften in steady August for hospitality” (NIQ RSM Hospitality Business Tracker), 17 September 2026. [nielseniq.com](https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2026/restaurant-sales-revive-but-pubs-soften-in-steady-august-for-hospitality/) 4. NIQ, “CGA/Reputation study reveals AI and economic pressures driving new UK consumer habits in hospitality”, 2 October 2025. [nielseniq.com](https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2025/cga-reputation-study-reveals-ai-and-economic-pressures-driving-new-uk-consumer-habits-in-hospitality/) 5. Restaurant Online, “Diners want more AI-powered personalisation in restaurants research finds” (Toast research), 6 October 2026. [restaurantonline.co.uk](https://www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2026/10/06/diners-want-more-ai-powered-personalisation-in-restaurants-research-finds/) ## Contact - [Book a demo](https://calendly.com/boxlycrm/meet-holly-your-digital-concierge) - Holly is a product of Holly AI, a subsidiary of EB Tech Limited.