A wet Tuesday in July with eleven covers on the book is a real problem, and TheFork is a real answer to it. It inherited Dimmi's Australian restaurant base, it sits inside Tripadvisor, and it can put people who have never heard of you into seats that were going to stay empty. Press reports put it at more than four and a half thousand restaurants. It also has a manager app that works properly on a phone, which is more than several products here can say.
What a marketplace is genuinely good at
Credit where it is due. Filling a quiet service with strangers is a job no diary can do by itself, and a timed offer to shift a slow night is a legitimate tool if your margins carry it. TheFork's diary is solid too, with a floor plan, deposits, a waitlist and confirmations. Allvio takes deposits at booking and runs a waitlist, but there is no drag and drop floor plan designer yet and no automatic no show or late cancellation charge yet either. If either of those holds your Fridays together, that counts against us.
The same diner, twice, in two systems
She books Thursday dinner through the app. That booking, her name, her mobile and the note that she does not eat pork all live on the marketplace side. On Saturday she is passing, comes in without booking, sits at the bar, orders two glasses and a plate and pays by card. Your till writes a second version of her, holding what she spent and nothing else.
So you have two half people. One product knows when she books and what she avoids. The other knows what she spends. Neither knows she has been in nine times this year, and nobody can tell you what she is worth. Ask which regulars have not been in since May and the only answer is exporting both lists and matching them by hand at eleven at night.
In Allvio it is one contact record, keyed on her email and phone, used by the diary, the till and the ordering page, with duplicates merged. The Thursday booking and the Saturday bar tab are the same person before you think about it.
Commission on the regular you already earned
The marketplace model is a fixed monthly fee plus a charge for each diner it sends you. The first time she came, that charge bought you a customer. The tenth time it bought you nothing you did not have, because she is coming for the food and clicking the app out of habit. Australian rates are not published, so you cannot model what that habit costs you next year without asking someone.
The answer is not to abandon the network. It is to make your own booking page the easy option for people who already know you. In Allvio that page is in the subscription and no cover carries a fee, so the marketplace can go back to doing the thing it is best at, which is strangers.
The email you cannot send from there
Telling her about the new winter menu is not something TheFork does. Email campaigns are not in the product, SMS campaigns are not either, and there are no automated birthday or win back messages, so the guest list gets exported into a mailing tool and you run a third subscription against a list that is stale the day after. Allvio sends email and SMS campaigns from the same record the diary and the till use, and shows what the people who opened them spent. That subscription also covers invoicing, payroll and the books, which is worth one line and no more.
Wednesday, and the schnitzel goes up three dollars
None of your menu lives in TheFork, so the new price goes into the till, then your ordering page, then the website, then the board. Public holiday hours are told to the marketplace, the till, the ordering page and Google separately, and the one you forget takes an order you cannot fill. A new casual has to exist in the roster tool and the till. Five minutes each, several times a week, forever, plus the times somebody forgets and a customer finds out first.
The bill, and the bill after that
Before your first marketplace cover you are buying a subscription, a till, hardware and probably an ordering page from three companies, and the per diner charge starts once the seats fill. Allvio publishes its numbers in Australian dollars: Complete is $399 per month ex GST for one location with every app switched on, plus $299 per month for each extra location, with no per user charge, no per app charge and no fee per cover. Build your own starts at $20 per month per app. Hardware is bought outright at $1,499 ex GST for the single station, $1,869 for the retail station and $2,499 for the restaurant station. The trial runs 30 days and asks for no card.
TheFork | Allvio | |
|---|---|---|
What you are actually buying | A reservations diary plus a diner marketplace with Tripadvisor reach that fills quiet services | One subscription covering the diary, the till, your own booking and ordering pages, the guest record and the roster |
The same guest twice | Marketplace bookings and till sales are two records of one person, matched by hand if at all | One contact record keyed on email and phone, with duplicates merged |
A regular booking again | A marketplace cover carries a per diner charge on top of the monthly fee, however well she knows you | Bookings on your own page with no charge per cover |
Changing a price or a menu item | No menu in the product, so the till, the ordering page and the website are each changed separately | One menu behind the till and the ordering page, changed once |
Changing your trading hours | Told to the marketplace, then the till, then the ordering page, one at a time | Sessions and trading hours set once |
Telling regulars something changed | Email and SMS campaigns are not in the product, so the list is exported to a separate mailing tool | Email and SMS campaigns from the same record, with results tied back to spend |
Working out what it will cost you | Australian rates are not published and the per diner charge grows with a good month | Published in Australian dollars, so the maths is yours to do tonight |
When it breaks mid service | TheFork for the diary, another company for the till, another for ordering | One number for all of it |
Best fit | A metro restaurant with empty midweek seats that wants strangers and will pay per head for them | A venue whose regulars are its business and whose till, diary and guest list should agree |
What she sees on the ninth visit
She is greeted warmly, because your staff are good people with memories. Not because anything told them she was here on Saturday, that she skips the pork, or that she has spent hundreds with you this year. Two systems hold half of her each and neither will ever say her name to the other, while a fee is quietly paid on the half that arrived through the app.
TheFork earns its keep on a quiet Tuesday
If your midweek is soft, you are in a metro market, and you would rather pay per head than watch an empty room, TheFork does that job well and Allvio does not do it at all. Keep it for strangers if the numbers work.
Just make sure the second visit belongs to you, and that what you know about her is written down in one place.
This comparison reflects each product's general positioning as published by each vendor in August 2026. Features and pricing change: always check directly with each vendor before deciding.