Sample: Keen on Developing a Waitlist App for Your Restaurant? – Heed These Important Tips

Restaurants always end up losing potential customers even before meeting them because of long waiting queues during dinner time. Providing them with a direct number is no longer a practical solution as customers today don’t prefer making phone calls and absolutely don’t prefer waiting at the end of a busy line.

A restaurant waitlist app offers a perfect solution to manage restaurant waiting queues effectively. It helps restaurants grab the potential business opportunity by providing essential transparency, customer engagement and experience.

What is a waitlist app?

A restaurant waitlist app is essentially a queue management platform. It not only enhances your customer’s waiting experience but also improves your staff’s efficiency. This app enables guests to quickly join an online queue using their smartphones and keep a check on their position in the line. Your manager can manage the online waitlist by keeping an eye on the number of customers in the queue whilst chatting with them and sending notifications.

Benefits of an app

1. Better efficiency and transparency: The software regulates a restaurants’ waiting line process. With this app, customers can join the online queue instead of a physical one by providing their contact numbers and name. The app also predicts the flow of guests and helps customers track their position in the line thus, offering more transparency.

2. Improved staff productivity: The app helps administrative staff to avoid chaos by maintaining a single waitlist. It also helps the staff prepare for a particular special guest since they now possess all the personal information provided by the customer.

3. Enhanced customer loyalty: The associated wait time transparency enhances service quality, reduces customer complaints and builds customer loyalty.

4. Increased revenue: The software efficiently manages the waiting queues and prevents potentially lost opportunities, resulting in increased revenue.

5. Access to customer insights: The app provides restaurateurs with vital insights through critical information and metrics such as average bookings, wait times, customer feedback and several walkaways. It helps them assess their performance and take better decisions.

6. Physical distancing: A restaurant waitlist app helps implement physical distancing by eliminating physical queuing.

Why should I develop a custom app?

Although there is a whole range of readily available restaurant waitlist apps, developing a custom app for your restaurant has its perks. Custom apps prove to be cost-effective over time. With your app you can do the following:

• Cater to your restaurant’s specific business needs and requirements
• Add or remove functionality based on your changing needs
• Integrate your app with your existing in-house software or other third-party services
• Offer quick maintenance and support on the app, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction
• Derive valuable business insights by collecting, storing, processing and analyzing customer data

Tips to develop a waitlisting app for your restaurant

• Make it simple yet intuitive: Simple is the new mantra of success! Your app should be easy to operate and also intuitive enough to notify your customers at the right time. Further, you can also use the app to engage with your customers by advertising special items from your menu. However, avoid overdoing it as it carries the risk of disengaging some customers who may not like direct advertising coming their way.

• Ensure app scalability: The restaurant waitlist app is a long-term investment. Based on your restaurant’s roadmap and future plans, design a scalable app that supports your business expansion.

• Make sure to incorporate the most important capabilities: 

There can be various items that are crucial for your staff, such as

1. Queue/wait time management
2. Floor plan management and customization
3. Self-service capabilities
4. Guest management and timing
5. Analytics

Similarly, there are many critical aspects that are important for the guests, such as:

1. App accessibility
2. User experience
3. Communication functionality
4. Social media sharing

Depending on your customers and staff, identify your app’s vital features and focus on incorporating them as your priority.

• Learn from the best

You can follow some of the best restaurant waitlist software models to develop your app and then think about enhancing the user interface and functionality to improve your guest experience.

Restaurant waitlist apps are the need-of-the-hour in the hospitality industry today. The right app with an efficient user interface and functionality can drastically reduce waitlist abandonment, enhance your opportunity to serve potential customers, increase revenue, and earn customer satisfaction and loyalty.