Overseeing your restaurant waitlist is an essential part of restaurant management. Long wait times often mean a worse overall customer experience. Many diners will prefer to eat elsewhere if restaurant hosts don’t give them an accurate estimate of their expected wait for a table.
If you want to improve your customer service, try setting up a waitlist system so that guests know how long they’ll have to wait for a table. Luckily, there are many ways that restaurant managers can streamline their waitlists.
Keep reading to learn more about restaurant waitlists, including methods for managing your waitlist and how they can improve your customer service. We’ll also provide other strategies for reducing wait times.
A restaurant waitlist is a method of tracking the customers waiting for a table in a restaurant. When your restaurant is full, new walk-in customers are added to a waitlist so your hosting staff can keep track of whose turn it is to sit down next.
Waitlists are a vital part of table management for busy restaurants, as they provide a fair system that ensures nobody jumps the line.
Research into consumer attitudes reveals that 30% of restaurant customers are happy to wait up to 15 minutes and 38% will wait up to 30 minutes. But beyond 30 minutes, the percentage of customers who are willing to wait drastically drops off. Only 14% will wait up to 45 minutes, and only 7% will wait up to an hour.
Employing a waitlist system could help you reduce your wait times, ensuring you can keep your potential diners happy.
Managing your waitlist is also essential to customer relationship management (CRM). Use the right waitlist system for your restaurant to keep incoming customers happy and out of the dining room area — you don’t want crowds of people bothering your current diners.
Furthermore, an effective waitlist could help increase your restaurant’s table turnover, meaning you can serve more customers at each service.
The most traditional method of restaurant waitlist management is simple: staffers working at your host stand keep a list of incoming diners and provide an estimated wait time to customers. This method is easy to set up, but it can be a hassle for your hosts to keep on top of things.
Many restaurants use a restaurant pager system with their analog waitlists. If you choose to do this, your staff can use buzzers to notify customers that their table is ready. It’s a valuable solution if you want customers to keep your dining space clear for other diners, as they can go for a walk or enjoy a drink nearby while they wait.
However, pager systems still require your staff to track who arrived first and how many people they need to seat.
A great alternative to this is using a digital waitlist, such as an online waitlist or a restaurant waitlist app.
Restaurant waitlist apps are easy for customers and hosting staff to use. Customers who want to get in line for your restaurant can do so virtually using an app. They provide their party size and name, then receive updates on the app (or via SMS notification if they’ve provided their phone number) about their table status.
The app will let them know when they should come to the restaurant to check in by text message or with a push notification.
There are plenty of restaurant waitlist apps to choose from, including:
Waitlist Me
Yelp Waitlist (formerly known as Yelp Nowait)
Hostme
Waitwhile
NextME
TablesReady
If your restaurant uses OpenTable booking software to manage reservations, this also has waitlist functionality.
With a waitlist app, incoming guests who join the virtual line can use the app to see how many others are ahead of them in the queue, and the apps can provide accurate wait times and real-time updates.
Most waitlist apps connect directly with your point-of-sale (POS) system, making it easy for your team to track how many people they need to seat.
Pricing for waitlist apps varies and can depend on how many notifications you send to customers.
WaitlistMe’s app starts at $23.99 per month for 1,000 notifications. Each additional message is charged at $0.02, so if you think you’ll regularly go over 1,000 tables in your waitlist, you should upgrade to one of the higher tiers. The pro plan costs $39.99 per month, while the platinum plan is $79.99 per month.
Some restaurant waitlist apps give users a certain number of free notifications each month. For example, NextME lets you send 100 free monthly notifications with their lite plan. Waitwhile also has a free plan offering 100 visits (with two SMS notifications per visit) each month without charge.
The digital waitlists from OpenTable and Yelp are part of a larger package of table-management tools. Depending on your package, you may have to pay higher monthly fees, but you also get more features (including POS integration and reservation management).
Don’t want to use a restaurant waitlist? Don’t worry — there are plenty of other ways to improve your restaurant’s dining experience and reduce wait times for guests.
Self-ordering kiosks like KioskBuddy can be a fantastic addition to restaurants. They let you keep wait times down by allowing more orders to be processed at once. Customers can place and pay for orders themselves on an iPad or tablet, so there’s no need for them to wait for staff.
Although they won’t help you clear tables more quickly, kiosks are ideal for smaller restaurants running on a counter-service model. Customers order at the counter and can take their food to go if there’s no table free.
Another way to reduce the number of customers waiting in your restaurant’s front of house is to establish an online ordering system on your restaurant’s website.
If your customers can place takeout orders before arriving on the premises, you’ll be able to limit the number of people waiting in your dining space. You can provide a pick-up time when they place the order, meaning they can simply walk in and collect the food as soon as it’s ready.
This will limit the number of customers clogging up your dining room, allowing your employees more time and space to engage with dine-in customers.
If your restaurant allows reservations, including a zero-tolerance policy for no-shows in your terms and conditions is a good idea. If customers don’t arrive within 10 minutes of their reservation time, they’ll lose the table.
You can, of course, allow for flexibility within this policy. For example, if the customer knows they’re going to be late due to traffic, they can easily make a phone call to let you know. If you don’t receive a call and the customers don’t appear by the cut-off time, your hosting staff are free to give the table to someone else.
It sounds simple, but it’s an easy way to ensure every table in your restaurant is available for diners.
Whether you use a restaurant waitlist app, table management software with a waitlist feature, or a simple manual list, setting up an effective waitlist in your restaurant will help you seat more customers during every service.
Self-service kiosks like KioskBuddy can be an excellent addition to high-turnover restaurants. They’re quick and easy to set up, and they could allow you to process more orders during busy periods.
Sign up for KioskBuddy today and enjoy a 30-day free trial.