5 crowd-busting tips to keep your customers happy throughout the holiday mayhem
If the silly season rush is filling you with more merry dread than festive cheer then try turning to tech to make sure you never lose a customer because of an over-packed restaurant again.
1. Waitlist Me is a free app that makes waiting for food one less thing for you and your customers to get frazzled about this Christmas. It helps you quickly communicate with guests via text or voicemail and provides them with estimated wait times offering transparency around how long it will take to get them seated. Despite not being an obvious queue buster, Waitlist Me customers have reported fewer walkaways and better customer satisfaction from guests.
2. Snappy Timer will keep your chefs, cooks, kitchen porters and bus boys in sync and on time. It’s a neat little app that lets you create a set of parallel timers, customised to different tasks or menu items. Your kitchen can also run multiple timers at once that all appear on the same screen. By making sure things are in step and running smoothly in the kitchen, you can treat your guests to snappy service rather than having to deal with snappy guests.
3. Mobile order and pay lets your guests order ahead or at their table for delivery, pickup or dine-in. They can order exactly what they want, when they want it and even add extra items to the check and pay for it when it’s most convenient for them. Mobile order and pay means an end to competing for wait staff attention and can help you turn tables faster, dramatically reducing walk aways from off-putting queues during this busy holiday season.
4. Digital menus make it easier for your customers to know exactly what to order by the time they need to pay, speeding up queues, engaging the customer and providing them with an overall better experience. They also make your life easy operationally by allowing you to quickly change menu items if something has sold out or amend prices if you’re looking to quickly sell certain dishes.
5. Fix it quick. The last thing you want when you’re running a packed restaurant is for things to break but that’s the exact time it usually happens. If your equipment decides to pack up for the holidays then PartsTown.com gets things fixed quick. All you need to do is use you mobile to take a photo of the part or piece of equipment that needs fixed or replaced and image recognition software within the app will find a match from a database. Manuals are available for every major brand and in-stock parts are shipped same-day making sure you stay up and running to catch that Christmas crowd.
Whether it’s keeping your kitchen on time and in-sync or putting the power of order and pay in the hands of your customer, there’s a stunning array of cheap and effective solutions out there to grease your operations. By turning to technology this season, you can stay one step ahead of the frantic crowds making sure that your queue-busting efforts draw the shoppers in rather than heavy traffic driving them away.
