For

The table next door is fully booked tonight. Reviews decide which one of you it is.

The decision takes thirty seconds

When someone searches "restaurant near me," they scan the map results, glance at the star ratings, check the review count, maybe read the most recent one. Then they book. That whole decision takes under thirty seconds, and it is driven almost entirely by your Google profile.

A restaurant with 240 reviews at 4.7 gets the booking. A restaurant with 31 reviews at 4.5, serving better food, does not. The gap is not the kitchen. It is the review profile — and the review profile is a process problem, not a quality problem.

Why recency is brutal in restaurants

More than any other category, restaurant reviews have a half-life. A diner checking your profile wants to know you are good this month — not that you were good eighteen months ago. A five-star streak from last summer does not protect you when a competitor has fifteen fresh four-star reviews from this week.

Google weighs recency heavily in local search, and restaurant searchers read recent reviews more carefully than old ones. A steady flow of new reviews — two or three a week, every week — is what keeps you on the first page of the map results. Bursts and gaps do not. Consistency does.

The trigger your systems already have

A restaurant with a reservation platform and a POS already emits the events that should trigger review requests:

• Booking completed or marked "seated" in a reservation system that can send a webhook. The diner finished their meal. The system knows.
• Bill closed in Toast, Square, Lightspeed, or any POS with webhook capability. The meal is paid. The experience is over.

Either event is the perfect moment to ask. The diner is full, the conversation is still going, and the experience is fresh. Two hours later, they are on their sofa — and a WhatsApp message asking for a review lands at exactly the right time.

How it works

1. About two hours after the booking completes or the bill closes, the diner gets a warm WhatsApp thank-you with a one-tap link to your Google review page. The meal is still a memory, not history.
2. No review in 48 hours? One gentle nudge.
3. Still nothing at seven days? One final ask — then it stops forever.

It stops instantly on any reply, link click, posted review, or opt-out word. Every diner gets the same Google link — no gating, no filtering. Messages send during business hours only.

Connecting your systems

Reservation platforms. If your booking system can send a webhook when a reservation is marked complete — some do it natively, others through Zapier, and a few closed platforms like OpenTable and Resy only allow it for approved partners — ScoreJack receives the diner's name and phone number and starts the sequence.

POS systems. If your POS can fire a webhook when a bill is closed — Toast, Square, Lightspeed — the same flow works. The customer's phone number comes from the booking or the loyalty programme on the bill.

Zapier. Our Zapier app is in early access (email us for the invite), or connect via Zapier's Webhooks action today. Most reservation and POS platforms have Zapier triggers.

No system yet? Add a diner manually in ten seconds — name and phone number in the portal.

What it costs

ScoreJack starts at $49/month (Starter, 60 review requests). Growth ($149, 300 requests) suits a busy restaurant running covers every night. Pro ($349, 2,000 requests) covers multi-venue operators. Every plan includes the full feature set: WhatsApp sequence, dashboard, review-to-customer matching, website widget, webhook, and API. 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Cancel anytime.