No. Hiver has no native, purpose-built integration with TheFork, no restaurant booking system appears in Hiver's app library, TheFork is not on Zapier, and TheFork's own B2B API will not close the gap either because it is built for batch data synchronisation rather than live booking. Hiver turns Gmail into a helpdesk, so your bookings@ address stays where it is and gains assignment, notes and SLA tracking. TheFork is a booking network owned by Tripadvisor and, through TheFork Manager, the reservation software behind it.
The short answer
Hiver can receive a TheFork enquiry in your shared Gmail inbox and make it accountable. It cannot do anything with it in TheFork Manager. Checking the shift, holding a table, applying a promotion, noting a request: all of that still happens by hand, in TheFork Manager, by a person.
Hiver + TheFork | |
|---|---|
Native integration | None |
Best available workaround | A custom build on Hiver's API and TheFork's B2B API |
What the workaround still can't do | Check live availability, create or amend a booking, apply a promotion or set menu |
TheFork deserves credit on that middle row. It is the most openly documented booking platform in this comparison, publishing a developer portal for its B2B API aimed at CRM systems and large restaurant groups. It is still the wrong shape for handling enquiries, for a reason TheFork states itself.
What actually happens to a booking enquiry
Give Hiver full credit first. If your group is on Google Workspace and enquiries arrive at a shared Gmail address, Hiver is the lowest-friction improvement available: no migration, no new interface, and immediate assignment, internal notes, SLA rules and reporting on that mailbox. For a team fielding a steady flow of network enquiries, knowing who owns each thread is genuinely valuable.
Here is the real journey of one enquiry once you have done that.
A guest writes to
bookings@in Dutch, having found you on TheFork. They want a table for four on Saturday lunchtime, ask whether a small dog is allowed, and whether there is anywhere outside if the weather holds. The message lands in Gmail and Hiver assigns it.An agent opens it in Gmail and reads it, translating as they go.
The agent opens TheFork Manager in another tab, because Hiver cannot see the shift.
They check Saturday lunch for four, look at which terrace tables are bookable and which are walk-in only, and check the dog policy for the inside and outside sections.
They create the booking in TheFork Manager, re-keying the name, date, time, party size and the notes about the dog and the terrace.
They switch back to Gmail and write the reply, in Dutch if anyone on shift can, in English if not.
They close the conversation in Hiver.
The guest replies: "If it rains, can we still come inside with the dog?" That is a different section and a different policy. The agent repeats steps 3 to 7.
Every enquiry is handled twice, in two systems, by a person copying the same fields between screens. One operations director described the inbox behind this workflow as "a black hole, no KPIs, no response rate, nothing." Hiver lights up the response rate and the ownership, which is real progress. It cannot tell you which network enquiries became covers, which is uncomfortable when you pay commission on those covers.
The sharper cost is the enquiry you never hear about again. A guest browsing a booking network has a dozen comparable restaurants one tap away, so a slow reply is not a delay, it is a lost cover to a competitor on the same platform. A roughly 40-venue entertainment group lost a single booking worth £40,000 because the enquiry arrived outside working hours and nobody replied in time. A three-site pizza group put it more bluntly about a 30 to 40 cover enquiry: "It just sat there. No one saw it. They went somewhere else." Hiver did not cause those losses. Routing bookings through a system that cannot book anything is what makes the delay inevitable.
What Hiver actually connects to
Hiver integrates with more than 100 apps, and the named ones tell you who it sells to: Salesforce, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Okta, Jira, Slack, NetSuite, Shopify and Asana. It also offers a Zapier connector and the Hiver API for custom builds, and Harvey, its AI bot, suggests relevant templates, closes conversations and marks spam.
None of those is a restaurant booking system. This is worth stating carefully, because Hiver publishes a hospitality help-desk page that mentions integrating with booking engines and guest-management systems. That is general copy aimed largely at hotels, and what backs it is the 100-plus business apps, Zapier and the API rather than any named restaurant platform. So Hiver has not ignored hospitality. It has not built for the diary.
With TheFork the zap route is closed, because TheFork is not on Zapier. What TheFork does offer is more open than most: a B2B API developer portal, plus integrations with serious point-of-sale partners including Lightspeed, Oracle and Trivec. For a group wanting reservation data in its CRM, that API is a real answer. It is not an answer to this problem, and TheFork's own documentation explains why: the API is framed around data synchronisation without the need for real-time updates. It is a batch sync surface. A booking enquiry needs the opposite, a live availability check at the moment the agent is typing and the ability to write a real booking into the shift immediately. So the realistic route is a custom project against Hiver's API and TheFork's B2B API, and what it delivers is enquiry data landing in a Gmail conversation. Harvey helps with the writing rather than the booking: it can surface the right template and cannot see Saturday's shift.
There is one more gap for a multi-site group. Hiver's structure is Gmail's structure: mailboxes, labels and rules. A label is not a venue, so there is no native routing by site, no per-venue tone and no reporting by location.
Why this matters for booking enquiries
A support conversation and a booking enquiry look similar and behave nothing alike. A support conversation is resolved by a reply. A booking enquiry is only resolved when a table is held in the diary. That difference is the whole problem.
Hiver makes the email accountable. It cannot book the table. The transaction, the part that actually earns the cover, still lands on your team, one enquiry at a time. Hiver is best understood as the most graceful way to keep the old workflow rather than a way out of it.
What it looks like when the tool is built for booking enquiries
The gap closes when the inbox and the diary are the same surface, so a direct enquiry gets the same handling as a booking the network sends. This is what RevVue does, and it is easier to show than to describe.
Enquiries are tagged to the right venue on arrival, which matters for groups whose sites sit in different cities and sometimes different countries. Nobody works out which restaurant a message is about before answering it, because the team works from one queue, by location, rather than labels standing in for venues.
Every enquiry routed to its venue automatically, across cities and sites.
The AI drafts the reply in that venue's voice, using its menus, its policies and its own way of answering. For a group taking enquiries in more than one language, the draft is a starting point rather than a blank page.
A reply drafted in the venue's voice, waiting for the team to approve it.
Because it connects to the booking system, the AI does the step Hiver cannot: it checks availability and prepares the booking inside the same thread. The routine requests clear themselves, and the group bookings and private-hire enquiries, the ones the network does not send you, are acknowledged instantly and held for a person.
Group and private-hire enquiries acknowledged and prepared, ready for someone to close.
And because every enquiry is tracked by location, direct demand becomes as visible as network demand. Response rates and conversion by site, so you can see what your own inbox is worth next to the covers you pay commission on. Hiver reports on mailbox SLAs and response times, which cannot be compared with the covers the network reports.
Response rate, volume and conversion by location, measured against network-sourced covers.
An honest note on where RevVue is today
RevVue's TheFork integration is on the roadmap, and the honest position today is an email-only pilot. That pilot already delivers the inbox value shown above: location-aware routing, instant acknowledgement, AI-drafted replies, high-value bookings surfaced, and reporting by location. The direct booking-system connection will deepen that when it lands, but it does not gate the value you get today. The UK AI is in pilot.
This is the move the Brasilia Group made, off a horizontal helpdesk and onto an inbox built for the job. Their founder, Nikolaos Kiosses, put it plainly: "The transition from Zendesk to RevVue has been a game changer."
If your enquiries currently live in a shared Gmail account, replacing a shared Gmail inbox for a restaurant group is the most relevant read next. Since most of these enquiries arrive from the network rather than your own site, automating third-party booking emails covers that specific problem in depth. To see what the AI would have said to a real enquiry your team received last week, book 20 minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Does Hiver integrate with TheFork?
No. Hiver has no native integration with TheFork, and no restaurant booking system appears in Hiver's app library. TheFork is not on Zapier either, so Hiver's Zapier connector does not help. Bridging the two means a custom development project against Hiver's API and TheFork's B2B API, and even then it only copies enquiry data into a Gmail conversation. It cannot check live availability or create a booking.
Can TheFork's API connect it to a shared inbox?
Not usefully for booking enquiries. TheFork does publish a B2B API developer portal, which is more open than most booking systems offer, and it is a genuine answer for syncing reservation data into a CRM. But TheFork frames it around data synchronisation without the need for real-time updates. Handling an enquiry needs the opposite: a live availability check while the agent is replying, and the ability to write a booking back immediately.
Hiver's website mentions booking engines. Does that include restaurant diaries?
Not in any named sense. Hiver publishes a hospitality help-desk page that refers to booking engines and guest-management systems, which is general copy aimed largely at hotels, and it is backed by Hiver's 100-plus business apps, its Zapier connector and its API rather than by any named restaurant diary. With TheFork the Zapier route is closed too, so a custom build is the only option.
What do restaurant groups use instead for booking enquiries?
Most stay on a shared inbox and accept the double-handling, because no general-purpose tool solved the booking side. A purpose-built option is RevVue, which is location-aware and whose AI checks availability and prepares the booking inside the conversation. Its TheFork integration is on the roadmap, with an email-only pilot available now.
