It is a Friday at Side Café, a little after six. The coffee machine is still going, the first wine glasses are coming out, and the phone rings for the third time in ten minutes. Someone wants a table for four at eight. Someone else wants to know if the quiz is still on next week. The diary is a notebook behind the counter, the chalkboard says the lemon tart is back, and the website, last touched in spring, still promises the summer menu.None of this is a disaster. It is just a venue, being a venue. But every one of those small gaps costs something: a call taken while a guest waits at the bar, a table that stays empty because the booking went into the wrong week, a regular who turns up for a dish that left the menu a month ago.Tavilio started at that counter. Today we are opening it to everyone who runs a place where people gather.
One place, so the lists stop disagreeing
Most venues run on four lists that never quite agree: the website, the menu, the booking diary and the events. Each one lives somewhere different, and each one is updated by whoever has a minute.Tavilio keeps them in one place. Change a price once and it is right on the website, on the dish's own page and on the printed menu. Publish a tasting evening and it appears on your events calendar, with its own page and the places left. Take a booking on the phone and it lands in the same diary your guests book into themselves.The idea is simple: you should only ever have to say a thing once.
What is in it today
On day one, a venue gets:
A website that feels like the place. Pick a look, add your photos and a few words, and you are online the same afternoon, on a free address or your own, in Hungarian, English or German.
A menu you can change as often as the chalkboard. Dishes with prices, allergens and photos, each with a page of its own.
Bookings, three ways. Tables on a floor plan you draw once; time slots for community spaces and studios, where people book the room for as long as they need; and events, where guests sign up until the places run out.
Guests who look after themselves. An instant confirmation, a friendly reminder before they come, and a link to change the time or cancel, within the rules you set.
The whole crew. Everyone on the floor gets their own login with just the access their job needs, and a second place lives in the same account.
Paper, too. A printed menu drawn from the same menu, and a QR code that sends guests to your site.
Who it is for
We built Tavilio around cafés and restaurants, and then kept meeting people whose rooms work a little differently: the community hall that hosts yoga on Monday and a choir on Tuesday, the ceramics studio with three wheels and a waiting list, the bar that is really a quiz night with drinks.
So Tavilio does not assume a table. It assumes a room, and asks how people should come to it.
Free to start
You can open a place on Tavilio for free and keep it that way. When you want your own web address, more of your team on board or a second venue, there is a plan for that, and moving up or down never touches the bookings you already have.
What comes next
Launch is the start of the list, not the end of it. Two things are already on the bench:
A day you can drag. A full-day calendar for the venue, where you create a booking by drawing it, move it by dragging it and make it longer by pulling its edge. The diary should feel like a diary, not a form.
Events that happen online. Webinars, live tastings and talks streamed from the room, with the link sent to everyone who signed up, ahead of time and in the same reminder they already get.
Beyond those, we are going to build what venues ask for. If something about running your place is still a list that disagrees with another list, we would like to hear about it.
Come in
The Friday at Side Café still gets busy. The phone still rings, just less, and when it does, the answer is already in the diary. That is the whole promise of Tavilio: a little less admin, and a little more time for the people who walk in.
