Quandoo Is Shutting Down: What Restaurants Need to Do Before 30 September

2026-08-06 · Guides

On 24 March 2026, Quandoo announced that it is winding down. The Berlin-based booking platform — now formally "Quandoo GmbH i.L.", in liquidation — will keep taking reservations through 30 September 2026, switch off its consumer services on 1 October, and shut down its infrastructure completely by 31 December 2026. For restaurants across its eleven markets — Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore — that means finding a Quandoo alternative in a matter of weeks. But the search term is slightly misleading: because of what Quandoo actually was, most restaurants aren't looking for one replacement. They're looking for two.

The shutdown timeline: four dates that matter

You're not replacing one thing — you're replacing two

Quandoo was never just a reservation tool. It was a consumer marketplace: diners browsed quandoo.de or quandoo.at, discovered restaurants they'd never heard of, booked a table and collected loyalty points for doing so. From the restaurant's side, one product delivered two very different services — a system for managing bookings, and a steady trickle of new guests who found you through the platform.

That's why most "Quandoo alternative" comparisons miss the point. They line up reservation systems feature by feature, as if you were only swapping software. In reality you're solving two problems at once: where your bookings get managed, and where your guests come from. The reflex answer — move everything to another marketplace such as OpenTable or TheFork — solves both in one step, but it also recreates exactly the position you're in today: the guest relationship belongs to the platform, you pay per cover for guests who would often have booked anyway, and, as Quandoo has just demonstrated, the whole channel can disappear with one press release.

The more resilient setup is to separate the two problems. For booking management, use a system you control: a booking button or widget on your own website, a reservation link on your Google Business Profile, another in your Instagram bio. For discovery, the honest answer is that most of it already happens on Google — people search "restaurant near me" or find you on Google Maps far more often than they browse a booking portal. A system that supports Reserve with Google puts a booking button directly on your Maps listing, which covers a large share of what Quandoo's marketplace actually delivered. If you want extra reach on top, a marketplace can be a supplement — but it shouldn't be the foundation your bookings stand on.

Export your guest data before it disappears

Your guest database — regulars, contact details, visit history — is the most valuable thing sitting in your Quandoo account, and when the infrastructure is switched off on 31 December 2026, it disappears with it. Don't treat December as the deadline, though. Log in now, check what your account actually lets you export, and get a copy out while there is still a support team to help you — the closer the shutdown gets, the harder any export problem will be to fix.

Two more things about that data. First, GDPR: exporting guest email addresses does not automatically give you the right to send marketing to them. Contacting guests about their own reservations is fine; turning the list into a newsletter audience needs a valid legal basis, so treat marketing consent as something to collect fresh in your new system. Second, look at reservations already in your book for October and later — from 1 October you won't be able to manage them in Quandoo at all, so they need to be carried into whatever system you switch to, and those guests need to know their booking still stands.

The switch checklist: what to do before 30 September

Where Stolio fits — and where it doesn't

Stolio is a reservation system built on exactly the model this article describes: your bookings run through your own channels, not a marketplace. You get a booking widget, a plain booking button or a booking link for your website, your Google Business Profile and your Instagram bio; Reserve with Google integration for direct bookings from Maps; and automatic confirmation and reminder emails to your guests. On the Plus plan there's a visual floor plan with per-table reservations and an interactive timeline, plus a QR menu and a simple restaurant web page. Pricing is a flat fee from 499 CZK (about €20) per month with no per-cover commission, and your guest database belongs to you — export it any time. If you're coming from a platform that's shutting down, the Stolio team will import your existing guest data free of charge.

One honest limitation: Stolio's interface is currently available in Czech and English — not yet in German or Italian — and the guest-facing booking flow runs in Czech and English as well. For a team that's comfortable working in English, that's workable today; if it isn't for yours, the principle in this article — own your booking flow — still holds, just with a system in your language. If you'd like to see whether Stolio fits before the Quandoo deadline, the 14-day free trial requires no credit card, and we'll help you move your guest data over before it's deleted.