Waitlist Me offers several methods for calculating and displaying estimated wait times to help improve quote accuracy. The default option provides a rolling average wait that is recalculated every time a party is checked off the waitlist by being marked as served. You can choose a time period to include in this average, from 1 – 24 hours. Three group size ranges can be customized for displaying these averages. These settings are in the app under the gear icon > Customization > Waitlist View > Wait Estimates.

With Pro and Platinum subscriptions, there are advanced features to help you estimate wait times based on party size and time of day. The calculations can be set to use the previous week or previous four weeks of data for parties served. To enable this option, select Historical for the Calculations option from the menu shown above. Then you can access the data any time by pressing on the Avg Wait option from the main waitlist screen. (These settings can be accessed again quickly by selecting Historical on the main waitlist screen.)

The Waitlist Me iPad and Android tablet apps let you view graphs and charts that average the data for the previous week or four weeks, which makes it easy to spot trends over time. Use the menus at the top to switch between days of the weeks and various group views. This view shows a breakout of group ranges: 

While the combined view gives a historical waits that includes all group sizes:

If the data shows you consistently have waits for specific group sizes, it may be beneficial to remove some of the lesser used table sizes and add more to accommodate the group sizes that usually wait the longest. These metrics can help you plan future staffing so you can ensure coverage for the busiest times. Beyond helping with the real-time process of providing more accurate wait estimates, reducing walkaways, and improving customer satisfaction, the data can be used for strategic analysis and improvements.

If you listen to the internet’s many critics, millennials are self-obsessed complainers with a penchant for arrogance, an aversion to risk, and some serious Peter Pan Syndrome.

They also eat out five times a week, are looking to make big purchases, and prioritize investments in their mental health and physical fitness. Their spending power is estimated at $3.39 trillion. By 2020, they’ll be the ones paying for one-third of the world’s goods and services.

Millennials are increasingly becoming the customers you need to know inside and out. Who are they? How do they spend their money? What do they want?

Let’s take a closer look.

Who is the millennial customer?

Most people who consider themselves to be “young adults” fit into the millennial category. They were born between the early 1980s and the turn of the century (the generation’s end date waffles between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s, depending on who you ask). Today, millennials range in age from about 16 to 36. They are just now coming into their own as college graduates, young professionals, married homeowners, and parents.

Millennials make up the majority of the workforce in the United States. By 2025, 75 percent of the workforce world-wide will be made up of this one generation. The world is their oyster, and their wallets are open.

How do millennials spend their money?

Millennials pay more for brands and experiences—if the business in question offers them some sort of added benefit. That could mean more convenience, an alignment of their personal values, a better user experience, or greater perceived value.

They’re also incredibly loyal. Once they find a brand they love, whether it’s a store, a restaurant, a hotel, a gym, a salon, literally anything, they’ll stick with it. And, thanks to their penchant for social media, they’ll spread the word. With millennials on your side, referral business can become your new best friend.

What do millennials want?

This generation grew up as the internet was finding its legs. The oldest millennials were computer-savvy before Google was a thing, while the youngest can’t remember a world without YouTube. They’re gamers, emailers, texters, and content-consumers—and they expect the rest of the world to keep up with them.

What does that mean for you?

Eliminate the wait

For millennials, on-demand everything is the norm. A long waiting list is a major drawback. A long line? For those not enticed by hype or the cool-factor, long lines mean finding the next best thing: your nearest competitor.

Waitlist Me shortens lines and makes them invisible to new customers. The app lets you accurately estimate wait times and track your business’ resources, which can help you become more efficient over time. It also frees customers from your waiting area. This gives the illusion of shorter wait times, which makes more people want to stick around.

Be available on your customers’ terms

With the internet comes 24/7/365 availability. Does your small business need to be open all the time, every day of the year? Absolutely not! But to win over a millennial crowd, you need to create a digital presence that is open to customers around the clock.

We make it easy to do just that. Waitlist Me offers an add-yourself widget, which you can easily include on your business’ website. The widget lets customers add themselves to your waitlist, reservations, or appointment schedule from wherever they are. You can also display black-out days, specials, and more.

Go mobile

Just because a millennial doesn’t leave home without a smartphone doesn’t mean they want to dial your number and speak to you one-on-one. This generation infinitely prefers texting over phone calls.

That’s why Waitlist Me built text message notifications directly into the platform. Forget about hollering out names in a crowded vestibule or passing out buzzing pagers. With a single gesture, you can send a message directly to the party next in line. Your guest will get the message on their phone instantly, wherever they are, just the way they like it.

Any diner can appreciate black-and-white tile and chrome fixtures. Retro is always in, baby! But there’s a line between old-school cool and remarkably outdated.

Wondering where your restaurant falls? One easy way to tell is to check what’s waiting for queuers at your hostess stand. Is it a mobile device with a waitlist app, like Waitlist Me? Totally this-century. Is it a grease board and a dirty rag? A little grody looking, but still sitting on the fence. Is it a basketful of buzzers? Time for an overhaul!

Don’t believe us? Listen in to what your customers have to say when they’re handed a buzzer and told to wait ‘til it goes off.

“I’m not holding it.”

At 5, a buzzer is a novelty. It vibrates! It lights up! You get to be the first to know when it’s your turn! Unlike watching a cat chase a laser pointer, though, it’s a novelty that grows stale with age. While many customers are totally down for coloring alongside the kids—um, if you’ll upgrade that crossword puzzle, please—they’re ready to leave the buzzers to the grade schoolers.

“Gross! I don’t want to touch it.”

When was the last time you cleaned those greaseballs? Even though customers get them before their food, buzzers tend to be streaked with dust, grease, and who-knows-what else. In the age of germaphobia and a rising spate of super-bacteria, customers would really rather not come that close to a buzzing petri dish, thanks.

“Darn, what if I don’t hear it buzz?”

You’d think a hand-held buzzer would be easy to notice but often times, they aren’t. In fact, if customers set them down on the bar or slide them into a jacket pocket, the flashing lights and rattling plastic are easy to miss. To prevent this, one or more guests will disengage from the social atmosphere you’ve worked hard to create, all to ensure that they don’t miss out on their table.

“Someone needs to hold my drink.”

Short of a menu taller than a toddler, there’s nothing clunkier than a restaurant buzzer. Customers either need to set them down (where they tend to be forgotten), balance them on a limb (where they tend to fall), or hold them in one hand (where they take up much-needed real estate). For those that are keeping tabs of coats, bags, children, phones, or beverages, this becomes a nuisance they quickly resent.

“How close do you think we need to be?”

Will a buzzer work outside the lobby? How far from the front doors can customers wander? Being handed a buzzer on a crowded evening puts guests in a precarious situation: They need to pinpoint a space where they can comfortably wait and where the buzzer will still work. For long wait times, this can create anxiety. With every minute that ticks by, they wonder if maybe they missed their table. Cue constant check-ins with your staff, which defeats the purpose of the buzzer in the first place.

A better solution

Replace those outdated, expensive buzzers with a more up-to-date solution. Waitlist Me is so simple you can get started in a few minutes, and your guests will appreciate receiving a text instead of a clunky buzzer.

For restaurants that are looking for an attractive, secure display for their devices, we have teamed with ArmorActive to provide a hardware solution. ArmorActive’s iPad kiosks are designed to secure and protect the devices, while complimenting both the sleek look of the iPad and NoshList’s stunning user-interface.

ArmorActive, located in Utah’s “Silicon Slopes”, offers a number of attractive hardware interfaces for running applications such as NoshList, and is the fastest growing iPad kiosk design, engineering & manufacturing company in the world.

With iPad security provided by ArmorActive and the NoshList waitlist app, restaurants now have everything they need to make managing their wait lists easier and more secure than ever before.

Want to better remember seating requests for waiting customers? Or note which visitors are celebrating special events? NoshList lets you enter any notes you like, and they can be easily scanned from the waitlist view so you can better stay on top of things. They can also be viewed in the customer history view and the downloadable reports.

With the new Quick Notes feature, you can define as many pre-set notes as they would like to appear when a party is added to the waitlist. It’s great for common events, such as birthdays and anniversaries, or popular customer preferences, like dietary restrictions. They can even be used for tracking popular items people might order or specific things you may want to track in analytics.

The nice thing about QuickNotes is they speed up the process of adding parties because they can be selected from a list rather than typed out. Also, they make it easier to standardize how people enter important information across time and people.

You can edit QuickNotes in the app settings individually:

Or you can update them all at once in the settings on the WaitList website. If you have multiple devices the changes will synch so they are the same across all devices, but you will need to just go to the settings page on the other devices to trigger the sync.