A restaurant pager system can be a great addition to your food business.
Whether you run an eat-in restaurant or fast-food restaurant, a café or coffee shop, or even a food truck or food hall stall, implementing a restaurant paging system can be a fantastic way to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
If you’re considering using a restaurant pager system in your food business but don’t quite know where to start, don’t worry — we’re here to help.
Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about the different types of pager systems, including how they work and the ways in which they could benefit your food-service business.
Put simply, a restaurant pager is a wireless paging system that’s used in a restaurant or food-service setting to facilitate and simplify communication between members of staff and customers.
There are three main types of paging systems in restaurants:
Staff-to-staff pagers
Guest-to-staff pagers
Staff-to-guest pagers
Each type of restaurant pager system has its own uses and benefits, so it’s worth learning more about them to see which kind might work best for your food business.
Staff-to-staff restaurant pagers provide an easy way for front-of-house (FOH) and back-of-house (BOH) personnel to communicate with each other quickly and quietly. They’re particularly useful in larger restaurants where it may be more difficult for members of the staff to stay in close contact.
Staff paging systems and server pagers are mostly used to call servers to a different part of the restaurant, usually BOH. For example, kitchen staff can page servers when dishes are cooked and ready to be taken to a table.
Guest-to-staff or guest-to-server paging systems are those that allow customers to contact their servers digitally. They usually take the form of a button or device that sits on each restaurant table.
Customers simply press the call button, and this will alert their server that they’d like to place their order or pay their bill.
These devices can be made up of one single button to call staff, or they can have different buttons for different requests — a “ready to order” button, a “drinks refill” button, or a “check please” button.
Server calling systems like this provide an effective way to make sure your customers are well looked after without hassling them. They’re also great if you have a smaller team working for you, as they’ll be able to clearly see which tables need assistance and when.
Restaurant guest paging systems are probably the most common type of restaurant pagers. You may have encountered them in food courts or food halls or in busy restaurants with a high customer turnover.
If you have customers coming in but no tables ready for them at the moment, your FOH staff can give those customers a pager, buzzer, or beeper that will ring and vibrate once their table is ready. Your staff just needs to press a call button, and the customer will be instantly informed that a table is waiting for them.
Guest pagers like this can also be used in self-service restaurants, street-food stalls, or food trucks. FOH staff can give a buzzer to customers that will ring and vibrate once their food is ready to be collected.
There are several reasons why restaurant owners and managers might choose to use a restaurant paging system; they can improve the overall customer experience in many ways.
For one thing, pagers provide an easy way to ensure social distancing in your restaurant. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurant-goers all over the world became more aware of the need to maintain a safe distance from others. Pager systems can help customers stay safe by allowing anyone waiting for food or a table to wait outside of the restaurant itself.
Guest pagers in restaurants can also provide a simple way to automate a waitlist. Research suggests that customers wait almost 30 minutes for a table to become free on average. If you have several customers waiting for a table, your restaurant could easily get crowded — especially if they all choose to wait in the lobby.
However, with a restaurant pager system, customers can wait for their table elsewhere, improving the restaurant experience for your current diners.
Restaurant pagers can, therefore, be a simple and effective way to improve the guest experience in your eatery. This could increase customer retention over time and improve your profit margins. What’s not to like?
When it comes to choosing the right paging system for your restaurant, you’ll want to take into account your staff's needs and those of your customers. There are a few options available, and it’s worth looking at their features to decide which would work best in your business.
Coaster pagers are traditional disc-shaped buzzers or beepers that vibrate and ring when the call button on a master system is pressed. These are simple and effective, as well as very easy to use.
However, the technology associated with these pagers is a little old-fashioned. The pagers often have a short range, meaning customers have to stay close to the restaurant while they wait. If you’re choosing a coaster pager, opt for a long-range system (LRS) if your customers value flexibility. LRSs with long-range guest call allow customers to venture further afield while they wait.
It’s also worth considering the battery life of your pager system. If a buzzer runs out of battery, your customer won’t know when they should return to collect their food or when the table is free. Coaster pagers usually have rechargeable batteries, though, so recharging on a charging base or charging dock is easy.
Two-way radios or walkie-talkies can be a better option if you’re looking to improve your staff-to-staff communication in a larger restaurant space. Two-way radios let your team have full conversations by radio rather than just beeping or buzzing a member of staff in the hope that they come to a particular area.
As is true with coaster pagers, you’ll want to consider the battery life and range of your radios. If they run out of battery regularly, they’ll be practically useless.
You should also bear in mind that walkie-talkies can be more intrusive for your diners. If you choose to use a radio system for your in-restaurant communications, you may want to implement an emergency-use-only policy. This should keep diner disruption to a minimum.
If you don’t want to buy or set up new hardware in your restaurant, you could implement text message technology instead. Many kitchen display systems (KDSs), like KioskBuddy’s, are already able to send text messages directly to customers when their order is ready.
Customers simply place their order at a self-service kiosk or with a member of staff. They provide their phone number, and the BOH staff can just tap a button on their KDS when the food is ready to be collected. The customer will receive an automatic text message telling them their food is ready to go. It’s easy!
Sending your customers text messages instead of giving them a pager means they can venture further afield while waiting for their food or table. They work particularly well in self-service restaurants or takeout kitchens.
Implementing restaurant technology such as a restaurant pager system in your food-service business can be a brilliant way to improve customer satisfaction and all-around guest experience. Communications tech like paging systems or text message technology can make wait times more enjoyable for your diners.
With KioskBuddy, you can send text messages directly from your KDS to your customers’ cellphones to let them know their food is ready. It couldn’t be simpler.
Sign up to KioskBuddy today and enjoy an easy way to set up self-ordering and communicate with customers.