Since two Missouri Original Pancake House locations opened, the restaurants have used a pen-and-paper wait list.

Gordon Manus, owner of those two franchise restaurants, decided it was time to upgrade and bring the system into the new millennium. Manus traded the host’s pen for an iPad, and subsequently increased the restaurant’s revenue 5%, he says.

Manus employed technology vendor NoWait Inc. to upgrade its system. The restaurant purchased the iPads itself and pays a monthly fee to NoWait. Fees can be up to $199 per month per restaurant, depending on the scale of the restaurant. Manus says his fee is above $99. Restaurants need to have Wi-Fi to use the technology.

It took two weeks to outfit both of his restaurants with the new system, Manus says. NoWait created a floor plan for each location in the NoWait iOS app that lets the restaurant’s host see the status of each table: occupied, needing to be cleaned or vacant. Either servers or managers can update the table’s status from the NoWait app on their iPhone. This feature allowed the Original Pancake House to turn a table over four to five minutes quicker on average than previously, Manus says, thus seating more customers and increasing revenue.

In addition, the app includes a timer for each table, showing when the last party was seated, so the host and table busser can anticipate when a party will leave.

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“It’s more of an efficient turn around,” Manus says.

Besides using the app to manage the restaurant’s tables, Original Pancake House also uses NoWait to communicate with customers. When a customer comes into the restaurant and puts her name on the wait list, instead of writing it down, the host records the customer’s phone number. The host can then text the customer when the table is available. NoWait uses a messaging service, so the host can text in the app on the iPad.

Customers can then go shopping or wait in their car instead of in the front of the restaurant, Manus says. Having the text option is also nicer experience for diners than having the host announce people’s name on a microphone or have to go find them, Manus says.

Customers also can choose to download the consumer NoWait app, which is available for both iOS and Android. Diners can put their name on the wait list from anywhere at any restaurant that uses NoWait and see the number of  customers are in front of them in line. This way, if a diner is at home and sees there is an hour wait and 25 people ahead of her, she can wait awhile before she leaves her home.

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On Sunday, the restaurant’s busiest day, 65% of diners put their name on the waitlist through the app, Manus says.

“Some people [put their name on the list] in their church pews on Sunday,” Manus says.

First Watch Restaurants Inc. also uses NoWait in all of its 113 restaurants. Chris Tomasso, chief marketing officer at First Watch, says the restaurant has benefited from the analytics the app provides, such as the restaurant’s peak times and how long diners stay. The technology enables the restaurant to provide customers more accurate wait times, he says.

NoWait is currently used by 3,000 restaurants, including all 827 Chili’s Grill and Bar locations, says NoWait CEO Ware Sykes.

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Other casual restaurants employ mobile technology to reduce customer wait times. For example, Taco Bell’s ordering app lets customers order in app and pick up in the restaurant or in the drive-through. Online reservation company OpenTable Inc. has also enabled payments in its app, so a customer can pay a bill at a restaurant that she booked through OpenTable with payment information saved in the app.

 

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