Cozy Restaurant Reservation for Windows

An effective reservation system can be the difference between happy, pampered diners and grouchy, hungry ones. Cozy Restaurant Reservation is a basic program that allows users to take dining reservations. Although the program functions as designed, its lack of restaurant-specific features makes it hard to recommend.

The program's interface is attractive, reminding us of more recent versions of Microsoft Office applications. We got the sense that the program was originally meant for another purpose--just a generic scheduler, perhaps--and that it was tweaked slightly so that it could be passed off as a reservation system. Tables--which are referred to as "resources" throughout the program--must be entered manually, including their numbers and descriptions, and they're listed in a drop-down menu in the reservation screen. This might be fine for a very small restaurant with only one or two servers, but for larger establishments, we can't see how this could possibly work efficiently; there's no way to search for tables by section, number of seats, or any other characteristic. Curiously, the program also lacks a mechanism to prevent double booking of the same tables; users will only be able to tell that a table is already booked by looking at the calendar. There are also no provisions for managing waitstaff or dealing with walk-ins. The built-in Help file explains the basics of using the program, but does not seem particularly geared toward restaurants. Overall, Cozy Restaurant Reservation functions fine, but its features leave a lot to be desired.

Cozy Restaurant Reservation installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a folder behind upon removal. We recommend this program with reservations.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of Cozy Restaurant Reservation 3.4. The trial version is limited to 14 days.