Restaurant
Reservations 2.0:
Table Booking + Food Pre-Ordering
Restaurants use reservation apps to seat their guests. Now they can take a step forward and update to table booking + food pre-ordering.
Technology in restaurants is on the rise. Research from the National Restaurant Association shows that more than one-third of consumers are more likely to use technology-related options in restaurants now than two years ago. Yet, there’s more to come in 2015.
Restaurants actively use technology to meet the needs of millennials, early-adopters and tech-savvy folks. Restaurant reservation, food delivery, mobile payment, and recommendation apps serve as attractive tools for restaurant goers. For a fact, table booking has become so trendy that it should be the first thing for restaurant owners to consider nowadays.
Here are the three popular reservation services that are currently used at restaurants.
OpenTable
Leading provider of online restaurant reservations with more than 32,000 restaurants around the world and 830 million seated guests. Also lets diners to easily settle the check at some of the restaurants.
Yelp SeatMe
Leading review and recommendation app now allows restaurants to take online reservations from their websites and Yelp business pages. Available on mobile and desktop.
Reserve
App that suggests restaurants and receives table reservations based on user’s specifications. Also supports the mobile payment. Available in Boston, Chicago, LA, NYC and SF.
Each of these successful reservation services comes with a truly unique characteristic. For OpenTable, it’s the massive scale while for Reserve, it’s the personal concierge type of service. Now, let’s take a step forward and consider a whole new approach that puts together table booking and food pre-ordering.
Table booking + food pre-ordering, they’re better together
The notion that table booking alone is not enough advantage to attract customers has been around among many restaurant owners and managers. In contrast, food pre-ordering is known to add significant value to the customer experience and serve as a powerful selling point.
People appreciate comfortable atmosphere of restaurant and nourishing meals on their plate, but they are busier than ever. Table booking itself doesn’t save much time while existing online ordering services only offer takeout and don’t get you a table.
SF-based service Allset addresses the needs of busy people. By adding food pre-ordering, Allset solves the problem of waiting at restaurants by letting busy people to go straight to eating. With Allset, people can pre-order lunches at restaurants so that their table and food are ready when they arrive.
Allset goes further than existing table booking apps and helps restaurants sell pre-paid meals along with pre-paid tables. Restaurants can offer an additional layer of service and enhance their customer experience with food pre-ordering. By offering a new time-saving service to people with busy schedule, restaurants can expectedly increase their sales and table turnover rate.
For restaurant owners, the setup is free and requires no hardware (alas, a phone app for restaurant managers with no special hardware requirement). A single tap on the app — iPhone and Android — is all it takes for employees to accept orders.
Allset has a nice synergy with other reservation services. For instance, a restaurant can use OpenTable to seat their guests for dinner and Allset to offer busy people the fastest way to get to their breakfasts and lunches.
Allset is currently open for restaurant registration. There are only few spots left to get on board before the official launch. The early adopters will have an opportunity to be mentioned in major media and receive free online promotion.
