Posted by JM on 05.02.2012 | No Comments
People hate to wait. No industry feels this more than the food service industry in which restaurant profit margins depend on the patience of hungry patrons. Unfortunately, it’s hard to control or predict what people will do when they hear, “It’ll be an hour wait for a table.” Parties must chose: flee to a less popular joint or bite the bullet and try to distract themselves from their rumbling stomachs. The method of distraction is critical to keeping frustrations low. So what do people do to pass the time, and how do restaurants aid the process? I was curious, so I went out to a popular local joint called Burgatory Bar and asked the waiting Friday-night diners what they were up to.
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Posted by JM on 04.11.2012 | No Comments
How could we leave out Instagram?
If you’re like me, you didn’t understand the Instagram fuss until you downloaded it and got hooked. Maybe you found yourself taking pictures of street signs and hubcaps (and altering them with Instagrams’s one-touch photo filter) like you were a born photographer. Restaurants are jumping on Instagram’s popularity too, using their Twitter accounts to blast Instagram pictures to their followers and inspire social media engagement.
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Posted by JM on 04.09.2012 | 3 Comments
Your restaurant is well established on Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp, but what about the onslaught of newly-popular social media outlets? Pinterest, Foodspotting, foursquare, and FohBoh all cater to food or restaurants. Pinterest and Foodspotting both revolve around pictures, which we all know is a strong way to sell your restaurant’s fresh, beautiful delicacies. Brands are already marketing through these lesser-known venues, so don’t be the last one on board!
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Posted by JM on 03.19.2012 | No Comments
Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other social media sites hold powerful sway over today’s consumers. People are reading and engaging socially before they’re dining at a restaurant. Ultimately, social media becomes an investment of time, and as a busy restaurant owner or manager, you have to pick and choose which accounts to spend time on in order to make the highest impact (and not sink valuable work hours into surfing the ubiquitous social outlets). This blog is one of a three part series addressing restaurant social media, which will address the Critical Three, the Extra Ones, and the Social Media Aspect of Waiting.
Here’s a quick run-down of the top three social media sites you should be on, and how you should be managing them.
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Posted by JM on 02.06.2012 | No Comments
We know that waiting for a table at a restaurant is a pain for guests and that managing that wait list is a pain for hosts. Many restaurants have been looking for a way to replace pagers and pen-and-paper waitlists with a better alternative, and text message notification has emerged as a credible solution. It is, in fact, our business.
The new wait list technology market is growing, and it has seen the entry of no fewer than 10 competitors with a mobile waitlist product that replaces pagers. So at NoWait, as we develop our native iOS App to manage the wait, we are challenged daily to stay focused on development in order to remain competitive with the rest of the mobile waitlist competition as well as provide a valuable service to customers. At times, we have encountered our competition out in the field, and we’re often competing for the same business.
In spite of this, NoWait has grown to lead the market for the mobile waitlist solution. To achieve this success, the most important factor that has given NoWait an advantage over the competition has been our commitment to develop a quality User Experience (UX).
What is User Experience?
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Posted by NoWait on 01.12.2012 | 1 Comment
A smartphone is much more than a calling and texting device. It is a gadget that provides a world of mobile browsing and applications. Businesses have been capitalizing on text message marketing already in today’s mobile phone era, but there are many new ways they can take advantage of the growing number of smartphone users in the United States. These include creating mobile applications, QR (quick response codes), or mobile websites. Restaurants in particular can take advantage of smartphone marketing because smartphone users will spend wait time using their phones to browse the menu, look for deals and coupons, or find out more about the restaurant in general.
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