We have been working on a number of new features for NoshList, and one thing we have just released is a whole new look for the WaitList website. It is cleaner, faster and more mobile-friendly, so the pages will adjust to your tablet or phone as well as a computer browser.

Hope you like it!

We are getting ready to head to NRA, and are happy to have reached 11 million diners seated through the NoshList waitlist app.

We have also added three key features to improve restaurant efficiency, which include customizable text message notifications, multi-restaurant management, and a customer-facing waitlist display. These are now available on iPad, iPhone, and Android devices.

The customizable text message notification feature gives restaurants the ability to modify their text messages for waitlist notifications and allows managers to better engage customers by adding a link to their website or menu, or to inform their diners about specials and promotions.

With the multi-restaurant management feature, new admin accounts allow owners or companies with multiple restaurants to login and see how each restaurant is doing from one account. We work with a number of large chain restaurants and wanted to give them more powerful tools to manage all of their stores’ waitlists. These new multi-restaurant administrative features are an introduction to all the advanced analytics and other tools we can provide to restaurant operations managers and owners of multiple restaurants.

The third new feature released this week lets any restaurant using NoshList display a public view of the waitlist that customers can check from their phones to see where they are in the list. The mobile version uses a custom link in the notification message to highlight each individual customer’s position in the list on his or her mobile phone.

NoshList will also be attending the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago this weekend, May 18-21, and will be located in the Technology section in the North Hall, Level 3 in Booth # 5867.

From picking cocoa beans as a young boy on the Ivory Coast to being handpicked to work for Wolfgang Puck at Spago, Francois Kwaku-Dongo’s journey to becoming a world-class chef has nothing if not an air of earthy sophistication.

That blend is reflected in his food at eleven14 Kitchen at The JHouse in Greenwich, CT—where he balances direct-from-farm produce and locally raised meats (think grilled chicken with chopped market-vegetable salad) with exquisite presentation and taste (think chocolate in gold leaf with almond dacquoise and nougatine)—and in the way he runs the restaurant.

“The 51%,” says Kwaku-Dongo. “That’s what we look for. The unspoken qualities in a person that make them undeniably good at what they do. The other 49% is skill, knowledge, experience, which can be taught, learned, or trained. We look for staff members that are gregarious, inquisitive, and joyful; the ones who are excited by the interaction of food, drink, and people.”

An innate drive, enthusiasm, and delight in their work is matched with a highly developed system for efficiency and superior customer service to surround the top notch chef with a top notch crew. Most importantly, this translates into a phenomenal experience for customers to drive them in the door.

“Since seating in our highly in-demand patio space is on a first-come first-serve basis, our living room lounge often fills up quickly with guests vying for a table,” says Kwaku-Dongo. “We have even had parties offer money to other parties in exchange for a better wait time for the patio.”

It’s great to have demand, but it’s not going to help the chef wow them if people are tired of waiting, either for their food or their tables. So when asked about how his restaurant manages high-demand and high-volume seating, he points to NoshList.

“The Nosh app is used by a number of our staff, and as a result we heard the early mumblings of the [at the time] forthcoming WaitList,” he says. “It certainly beats staring at that annoying flashing beeping racket, imploring it to release you from waitlist purgatory; or wondering if the host perhaps wrote your name on the wrong piece of paper (and the promo video gets a laugh or two as well.)”

Kwaku-Dongo’s blend of sophistication and simplicity has a bit in common with NoshList. He believes less complicate equals less problems. If you can deliver that from the moment the customer walk into the door, then you are on your way to stellar reviews and growth. More importantly, you have one less headache to worry about.

So while you’re waiting to try Chef Kwaku-Dongo’s sea-salt-crusted baked striped bass with baby artichoke, spaghetti zucchini, heirloom tomato, and chanterelles, NoshList will let you know when it’s your turn and let Kwaku-Dongo’s staff know exactly who is where and how long they’ve waited. It’s a simple sign of 21st-century management balanced with the simple sign by the wood oven that reads, “Today’s wood is apple.”

Have a smart phone? Then you can use NoshList at your restaurant. We are happy to announce that our popular tablet waitlist app is now available for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android phones. It is free for download at the App Store and on Google Play Store.

The new apps make it even easier for a restaurant to run an organized, efficient and measurable waitlist that also provides valuable guest and operational analytics. The addition of this mobile functionality to the original iPad app gives restaurant operators the flexibility to use other iOS or Android when preparing to seat restaurant diners. The mobile app also removes the barrier of needing an iPad to use the solution by offering the NoshList platform on multiple devices.

A fully featured restaurant waitlist and guest-management solution, NoshList notifies diners via unlimited free text messaging and automated phone call alerts that their tables are ready, replacing paper lists, microphones and alert buzzers.

In addition to the unlimited free version of NoshList, there is NoshList Premium for $49 per month, per restaurant. Premium features include two-way text messaging, table number assignments, in-app statistics, designated local phone numbers, and 30-day analytics. The Premium features are only currently available for the iPad app and on the website, and will soon be added to the new mobile version.

NoshList is now in use in more than 2,250 restaurants nationwide. Clients include Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Buffalo Wild Wings, Miller’s Ale House and many other national and regional brands. To date, more than 8 million diners have been seated with NoshList since the company’s launch in February 2012, making it the fastest growing restaurant waitlist platform in history.

Red Robin fans, we have great news. The NoshList waitlist app has now been successfully integrated into all Red Robin International, Inc. company-owned restaurants nationwide.

Red Robin International, Inc. currently operates more than 330 company-owned Red Robin® restaurants and chose NoshList based on its industry-leading proprietary telephony technology. Similar to other multi-unit restaurants, Red Robin traditionally used pen-and-paper waitlists and microphone systems to address diners waiting to be seated. Prior to using NoshList, the casual dining chain experienced significant surges in both the front and back of house relative to guest flow during peak times. In February, Red Robin deployed NoshList to 50 locations, quickly rolling out to the remaining company-owned restaurants within 60 days due to the remarkable results.

“Beyond the benefits of waitlist management and improvement in guest experience, restaurants where NoshList had been deployed realized increased seating efficiencies and improved ticket flow through the kitchen making the decision to deploy NoshList to our other locations a no-brainer,” stated Chris Laping, Senior Vice President of Business Transformation and Chief Information Officer for Red Robin International, Inc. “For diners, this translates to shorter wait times, as the time that tables sit empty between parties is minimized to less than 30 seconds in some cases, and improved ticket times, as order flow through the kitchen is steadied.”

Red Robin also selected NoshList as its preferred front-of-house, guest management technology platform because of its simple and intuitive interface, which allows restaurants to implement quickly. The ability for restaurant operators to implement and train staff within minutes minimizes the resources that restaurants typically have to allocate to the introduction of a new piece of technology. Restaurants are better equipped to forecast expenses without worry of increases relative to changes in diner traffic.

Understanding that deployment of technology for multi-unit restaurants is no easy feat, NoshList, through a partnership with iPadEnclosures.com, has designed a “push-button” distribution strategy that can provide restaurants with up to 500 fully provisioned iPads within 7 days. “During phase one of our roll out to Red Robin, NoshList was able to provide 125 fully provisioned iPads to 55 Red Robin locations in a number of days,” says Cody Rose, Director of Restaurant Solutions for Firespotter Labs. “iPads arrived at each specified location provisioned with NoshList and preconfigured with a number of additional options including corporate 3G and/or wifi connectivity settings, screen protectors, a protective iPad Enclosure complete with mounting mechanism, and a free multi-device management solution (‘MDM’) for a truly out-of-box solution that allowed each restaurant to be up and running with NoshList within minutes.”