When Scott Wise launched Scotty’s Brewhouse in 1996, he was 22 years old with little restaurant operating experience. He had graduated with a degree in marketing and public relations from Ball State University and had just returned home to Muncie, IN, after a stint as a copywriter in Houston.

“I had always waited tables and bartended, and after college, hated my 9-to-5 job. I came back to my hometown and was drawing up the idea of what I wanted to do when I heard there was a bar for sale,” Wise said. “The owners asked me to put a business plan together. Then, months later, I went to the owner and bought the business.”

That business was Mugly’s Pub & Eatery, a local Ball State University student hang out with a pool table, three beers on tap and a burger on the menu.

For the next three years, Wise worked on the restaurant’s revitalization, changing the name to Scotty’s Brewhouse and eventually hiring enough staff to handle the growing clientele. That’s when he decided to open a second location. He was only 25, and already was building a restaurant chain.

Well, maybe not.

“I got the food service bug and just loved what I was doing,” he said. “But at 25 I thought it was easy and the second restaurant failed miserably.”

Undeterred, Wise decided to take the equipment from his second endeavor and open another Scotty’s Brewhouse location in Bloomington, IL. The year was 2011. The restaurant was a hit. A franchise was born.

Today, Wise and his executive team operate eight locations throughout Indiana. Their biggest store, in downtown Indianapolis, holds 450 guests.

The technology solution

With locations throughout the state and a continuous rise in customer visits, Wise was looking for a way to increase operational efficiencies while reducing costs. This led Wise and his team to NoshList, a waitlist app designed to simplify restaurant operations and improve the guest experience. The app runs on iPad and Android tablet and mobile devices and replaces old-fashioned paper lists and expensive buzzer waitlist tools.

“For the majority of restaurant operators who use our waitlist app, the switch was made because of the ease of our technology and its ability to cut down costs while improving the guest experience,” said Craig Walker, founder of NoshList. “Our tool gives restaurant operators the ability to seat guests faster, which increases table turns and improves restaurant profitability.”

NoshList, available as a free or paid Premium service, works by sending guests text messages to their mobile devices alerting them that their tables are ready. If a guest doesn’t have a mobile phone, they can still be added to the waitlist and the host can locate them once their table is ready.

More importantly, however, is that NoshList’s Premium users can utilize the app’s ability to collect analytics based on diner history. Additionally, Premium users have access to a two-way communication system for dine-in guests, so customers can let a restaurant’s host know if there are changes to the party.

“The ability to gain consumer insights based on visitor history is a huge step forward for users of our NoshList app,” Walker said. “And the ability for two-way communication further enhances our restaurant support.”

Wise had long been considered an early adopter of restaurant technology, a reputation that placed him on the industry speaking circuit for many years.

Scotty’s Brewhouse first started using tablets at the table in 2010. The move was a premature one in regard to customer acceptance. While the tablets didn’t work for his customer base he continued to look for new and emerging technologies that would push the brand forward.

“With the use of technology, you don’t do something that you think is cool or looks good. It has to save an operator time and money,” Wise said. “The reason why I got into tablet waitlist technology was because I was frustrated with how many pagers got stolen, or broken or lost.”

After the failed tablet experiment, Wise decided to use NoshList as a way to increase sales and reduce operational costs even though he wasn’t sure customers would give out their cell phone numbers.

“In the beginning I was nervous,” he said. “I don’t believe in text marketing and I wasn’t sure if people would give us their cell phone numbers. We had a little pushback from customers, but it wasn’t enough to stop using the technology because we were saving money on broken pagers and streamlining our seating capacity,” Wise said.

To date, WaitList has seated more than 34 million diners through its free and Premium versions and in May launched an updated version specifically for iOS 7.

“The app continues to ramp up and is proving to be a great technology. With some of the bigger software companies, they are so slow in incorporating new technology that by the time they do it the next wave is out,” Wise said. “For my staff, the reaction was initially ‘how do I do this?’ But once they got it, they loved it. This is one technology that I didn’t have to push at all and was not too difficult to put in place.”

Additionally, Wise and his team were concerned that customers would walk away once their names went on the waitlist because there was no buzzer that would tether them to the restaurant.

“We worked with NoshList on a number system that let staff know if customers had gone somewhere else,” Wise said. “And if people are wondering about their wait, they can now look at their phone and see how much time they have left. This lets the hostess focus on other things and it doesn’t make guests feel like someone forgot about them.”

Over the past six months, Scotty’s Brewhouse guests have embraced the NoshList technology. And because it’s an app-based system, the waitlist keeps running even if internet connectivity is lost.

“The best thing is we don’t have pagers anymore. That cost was huge for us,” Wise said.

NoshList was proud to be a sponsor of the 18th Annual Restaurant Industry Conference put on by UCLA Extension in collaboration with world-leaders in brand development, food services, design innovation, operations excellence, market analysis and customer satisfaction.

Having recently launched our new waitlist app for iOS 7, the conference was a great place to show how NoshList continues to innovate in helping restaurants improve their guest experience and operational efficiencies. We also plan to be at the big National Restaurant Association conference on May 17-20 in Chicago.

The UCLA event was a great place to network and learn, as it brought together a number of honored speakers and panelists to discuss current industry issues and trends. Conference topics included brand development, food service, design innovation, operations excellence, market analysis and customer satisfaction. The leaders of Yelp were there along with emerging restaurant concepts panel speakers. BrightLocal said that 95% of consumers are turning to the internet to find local businesses.

One of our favorites was the presentation by Chef Thomas Keller (The French Laundry), Innovation Award Winner. He has won multiple awards, including “America’s Best Chef,” though the interviewer (Pres of the Culinary Institute of America) also called him the most important chef in American history. He was interviewed by Dr. Tim Ryan, President of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Dr. Ryan won the award last year and came back to interview Thomas Keller this year, partly because they are very good friends, which gave the interview a different perspective. Keller had a very interesting story and presented a lovely lunch.

It was also fun when the UCLA singers came in at the beginning and sang the itinerary for the day to the group.

We are happy to announce the latest version of the NoshList iPad waitlist app along with a host of new features that let restaurants improve their guest experience and their operational efficiencies. Redesigned for iOS 7, the new app makes it easier to organize a waitlist and remember guest preferences with better notes and sortable statuses. Table management has never been easier with customizable table selectors, and the ETA feature lets restaurants keep track of same-day call aheads. There are also a lot of other enhancements to the user experience and look and feel. Check out the tutorial video below to see how it works:

With the new Quick Notes feature, restaurants can define as many pre-set notes as they would like to appear when a hostess is adding a party to the waitlist. It’s great for common events, such as birthdays and anniversaries, or popular customer preferences, like dietary restrictions. The notes can be viewed in the waitlist for easy reference and can be synched across all devices a restaurant might have.

A restaurant can also customize the table numbers that appear in a spinner for simple table assignment when customers are seated or added to the waitlist. Table management is a natural extension of running a waitlist, and we have made it much easier to assign and track table numbers in the new NoshList app.

The new app also integrates other features into the main waitlist view in more seamless ways. Seated history shows below the current list and can be toggled on and off. Parties that have an estimated arrival time are grouped below those with a quoted time, and people that add themselves to the list show up at the top with special highlighting to alert the hostess.

Public Waitlist in settings – The public waitlist page can be customized in the “Settings” area of the “Account” after logging into www.noshlist.com. In addition to being able to customize the link of the public waitlist and change the settings on how guests can add themselves to the list, you can customize the page itself by clicking on the “Customize page” link

Customize page – You can add text or any HTML to the bottom of your public page and preview it on the customize page. When you want to push it live, just click “Publish”. In the example below simple HTML has been added to reference an image (which would be hosted on another website) and add a link to that image

Customized page example – Below is an example of how the public waitlist page would look with the above example, and you can link to this page from your restaurant website as an easy way for people to see the current waitlist and add themselves to the list. You can also see this example live here: http://www.noshlist.com/n/brianscafe

When a person adds themselves to the list the hostess will see a notification on their NoshList app and can choose a wait time and add other information through the regular flow for adding parties. The information the person submitted will automatically be pre-populated in this flow and the customer will get a confirmation message when they are added to the list. You can also choose in the settings to have the person automatically added to the list.

Customized public page on the phone – Whenever a person is added to the waitlist with the NoshList application they get a text message confirming that they have been added to the list if they have given their phone number. There is also a link to the public waitlist so the customer can check their place in line from their phone, and their initials will be highlighted in the list. This makes it easy for people to estimate their remaining wait without finding and bothering the hostess. By customizing the public waitlist page, you can also give customers information about daily specials, coupons or your loyalty program that they can check out while they wait

Default notifications in settings – You can also customize the two text messages that customers receive while they wait. The first message confirms the person has been added to the waitlist and gives them a short link to check their place in line. The second message notifies the customer that their table is ready and gives them a couple simple options for replying whether they need more time or if they have decided to go somewhere else. These will appear in the NoshList app so the hostess can see the customer’s response. Here is what the default messages look like:

And this is how the default messages look on the phone

Customized Notifications – NoshList Premium gives the ability to customize both of the messages in the settings. In the example below the first message has been changed to give an additional prompt to check out a coupon while they wait on the public waitlist page, and the second message gives another reminder to check out other online offers, which could go to the loyalty program

And here is how the customized messages would look on the phone

We are always looking for ways to make people’s wait experience better, and we have added a new way for restaurants to engage and communicate with guests in a non-obtrusive way while they are waiting.

There is now a new NoshList Premium feature for restaurants and other places using NoshList to customize their public waitlist page on WaitList with any information they’d like their customers to see. Some ideas include daily specials, reward program information, a social media feed or video, a link to leave a review on Yelp, among others.

Here is an example of how a rewards program could be highlighted below the waitlist on the page visitors can check from their phones:

The way NoshList normally works is when a visitor has left their phone number and is added to the waitlist on NoshList, they automatically receive a text message confirming they have been added to the list and giving them a link to the public waitlist so they can check their place in line. The new feature allows guests to see more information below this waitlist, giving restaurants a great way to improve the guest experience even more and give helpful information to guests while they are waiting, right on their phone. The public waitlist can also be displayed on an internet browser in the restaurant or can also be viewed by customers from home. This public waitlist page is free for all NoshList accounts, and NoshList Premium users get access to this new customization feature as well as the option to let customers add themselves to the waitlist from their phone.

To add information to the public waitlist page, login to NoshList on the web and go to the Settings in the Account area. There is a “Customize Page” link that goes to a page where you can add text or HTML and preview how it will look on the page. Adding HTML gives you the flexibility to style the area with any fonts, colors, links, and images that you’d like to appear on the page. Otherwise you can just add text for some simple messages. There are also various online HTML editors as well as HTML views in most popular online blog services (like Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, etc.) that can help with formatting text into HTML

Want to customize the page even more or include the NoshList waitlist on your site? Let us know at [email protected] and we can help you with this as well.