Restaurant management has taken leaps and bounds when it comes to increasing efficiencies and improving up on the customer experience. Using technology allows restaurant managers keep a keen eye on every process that is key to running a successful business. One area of concern is seating your customers. Typically, a sheet of paper or some editable board maintained by the hostess, allowing new additions and the ability keep status on when a party will be seated.
If you use OnTheList, the paper and boards go away, leaving you with a digital rendering of your restaurant table layouts, status on when a table will be free and an easy to maintain waitlist, so you can let your customers know how long of a wait they have before they put their name down. It also allows you to easily enter reservations, ensuring that spots are reserved for the appropriate times.
The app is very easy to setup and use. The first thing you’ll need to do is setup your table and bar layouts, showing how many can be seated at each table and the locations of each table. This helps for when you need to put tables together to accommodate larger parties. Once you have your restaurant layout saved in the app, you can also add staff and other pieces of information that are vital to your operation.
At this point, the app is ready for use. All you do now is add customers to the wait list as needed. The app will provide an approximate wait time based on data is gathers over time. When you first start using the app, it won’t have much data to go off of, but as time passes, it will be able to use logistics and timings based on day of week, size of parties and time of day to predict how long it will take for a table to free up given the current capacity of diners.
Once a party’s table is available, the app will send them an SMS message and will alert you as well. This allows you to drag and drop the customer entry onto the table in the diagram, giving you a visual on who is seated where.
An aspect of the app that helps to increase walk-in traffic is the ability for customers to monitor the waitlist on their own, so if they see a table free or about to become available, they can walk in and get seated, without waiting or with a minimal wait. It’s a win for the business and a win for customers.
If you are established on the sister app called TownVu, customers can also put themselves on the waitlist and arrive once their table is soon to be ready. It puts the power of predictability and smart time management in everyone’s hands, increasing customer influx and building up on a positive customer experience.
If there were anything I would suggest it would be to provide business owners with a complete package of the various apps offered by SalesVu that work well together and build a strong customer experience and restaurant management foundation in a simple to use and manage bundle, making it easy to manage whatever payments need to be made and to manage software upgrades, to ensure all upgrades will work without errors.
On its own, OnTheList makes restaurant seating management a smoother experience for both the business and for the customer.