Cooking Class Booking Software, Sold a Seat at a Time

Someone books a Friday, pays for the seat as they book it, and for a lot of guests that's the whole relationship: no membership, no card to keep on file after tonight. The class is a service with its own date and its own number of places. Stripe takes the card in the same flow as the booking, and a promotion code can fill a quiet Tuesday sitting without you rewriting what everything costs.

There are as many places in your class as there are boards, burners and knife rolls, and that number is also your shopping list. If the kitchen runs twelve stations, you buy for twelve, not for however many people you're hoping will show. The thirteenth person isn't a squeeze, they're someone standing behind a stranger's shoulder all evening with nothing to cook on. Classes and courses carry a capacity limit you set, so the class stops taking bookings at the number the kitchen can work, not the number you find out about when the fish arrives short. Each class is its own service with its own limit, which matters because a hands-on pasta night and a demonstration where people watch and then eat don't hold the same room.

A knife skills hour, a three-hour Thai night and a full day of bread aren't different sizes of the same class, they're different services, each with its own length. Between them is the part that isn't teaching: ovens off, boards through the machine, mise en place laid out again before the next sitting walks in. That gap is a per-service break you set, so the evening class doesn't start while the afternoon one is still being swept up. When somebody can't make the Friday they bought, the booking moves to another date instead of a refund neither of you wanted.

A booked seat often comes with a message: is there a vegetarian option, my partner can't eat shellfish. Those questions shouldn't hold up payment, and they don't have to: the seat is already paid for by the time you're reading them. What can go on the booking itself is the money: optional paid add-ons per service let a class carry a wine pairing, an apron to take home, or the printed recipe pack, chosen and charged with the booking instead of collected in cash at the pass. Refunds and extra charges run from the same dashboard.

You are not at a desk. You are at a stove with your sleeves rolled up and twenty minutes between the shopping and the prep. The kiwilaunch iOS app puts your calendar, your customers, your bookings and your payments on your phone, so those twenty minutes are enough to check Friday's headcount against what's paid and see which stations are actually filled. When a guest turns up with someone who wasn't on the list and there's one station free, Tap to Pay on iPhone takes their card against the top of your phone, with no reader to buy.