A clear walkthrough of booking on MeFirst, how shops get paid, and what comes with Free, Plus, and Platinum.
If you are booking
Explore shows shops that are live and ready to take bookings. Spotlight is an optional featured placement at the top — it is separate from the map pins. Search by service or shop name, filter by category, and open a page for hours, staff, prices, and photos.
Choose a service, a team member or Any Available, a day and a time, then add it to the cart. You can add more stops at the same shop or another. At checkout, pick Pay Now or Pay at Shop where the shop offers it, add optional vibe notes for the chair, and confirm. Your booking then lives under My Appointments.
Follow a shop to see their What’s New posts in Following. Reviews need a signed-in account. Memberships, merch for collection in-shop, and the live queue appear when that shop has them switched on.
If you run a shop
Sign in with Google, then finish onboarding: profile, address, services, staff, photos, Stripe payouts, and a plan. Free includes your listing, What’s New, stories, POS, calendar, payouts, and confirmation and cancellation emails. Plus (€19.99/month) adds reminders, Quiet Chair / marketing emails, memberships, and the digital walk-in queue. Platinum (€24.99/month) adds an in-shop merch catalogue and slightly wider discovery extras.
Memberships and merch need the matching plan. The shop is publicly bookable once Stripe Connect is live. Lookbook photos are screened automatically before they are stored.
After you book
The time is held so two people cannot take the same chair. Some shops auto-confirm; others accept the booking first. Each shop sets a cancellation notice window. With enough notice on a Pay Now booking, ninety percent of the service amount is refunded automatically; the Service Fee is not. If the shop cancels, everything paid online comes back, including the Service Fee.
On the day, bring your confirmation. Pay Now means the service is already settled online. Pay at Shop means you pay at the till as usual. Merch is collected in the shop — we do not post it.
Our role
MeFirst is the booking and payments layer between you and independent shops. Live listings have finished onboarding and payouts. The shop you choose is who you sit with; we look after the listing, the calendar, and checkout around that visit. Stories are a short extra on top of a lasting shop page.