With stay-at-home orders the law of the land in most cities and states across America, dining out is quickly becoming a distant memory. But delivery and take-out? Restaurants from Tacoma to Charleston are figuring out how to keep their kitchens open, and Waitlist Me is helping with this process. 

Waitlist Me is the waitlist and reservation app that’s intuitive to get started and start using within a few minutes. It’s built for people, not techies, so you can learn it in minutes. We made sure that Waitlist Me isn’t just easy to use; our entire service is user-friendly, from usage (unlimited on multiple device) to customer service (prompt and friendly) to billing (simple and transparent, guaranteed). And it’s flexible enough to use on different devices in different business environments. You can install the Waitlist Me business app on Android and iOS devices, and use it in a browser on computers. 

Here are a few tips on how restaurants can use Waitlist Me’s features to keep their kitchens open, their employees working, and their customers well-fed during the coronavirus crisis.

#1. Manage a smoother pick up process 

Under normal circumstances, you would use Waitlist Me’s text notifications to alert guests once they’re added to your restaurant’s waitlist and again when their table is ready. During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, you can customize them in another way: Use the first notification to confirm an order. Send the second notification to let customers know when their order is ready and waiting for them.

Bonus: Thanks to our public waitlist feature, guests can also check on their order and see their estimated wait time. That way, they can plan their arrival based on where they are on the list. 

#2. Communicate simple no-contact pick-up instructions

Head off panicked phone calls and take-out containers that go cold before their ride arrives. How? By using Waitlist Me’s customization features to share your pick-up policies with your guests. These could include asking your customers to pop their trunks to facilitate no-contact pick-up, or to direct them to a particular area to gather their order.

We recommend adding these instructions to your…

– Website order form or Waitlist Me’s add-yourself web widget, which customers will see when they submit their orders

– First notification text, which you’ll send to confirm the order

– Second notification text, which will let guests know when their order is ready for pick-up

Bonus: Because Waitlist Me’s interface is a cinch to navigate on any internet-enabled device, you can update your instructions in seconds.

#3. Improve communications with two-way texting

Waitlist Me makes it easy to keep track of how long people have been waiting and when you have sent them notifications. You can also see when people reply with text responses and what they say.  There are a couple built in behaviors triggered in the app that are usually used to cause different parts of the app to flash if a customer is coming soon or cancelling. These can be repurposed in other ways, like for knowing when customers arrive, by changing the instructions in the text notifications. 

Waitlist Me Pro has a two-way texting feature that allows you to send open text responses to customer texts. You can answer questions, specify details on their order, and keep them updated on when their food is expected to leave the kitchen.

Tip: To ensure prompt pick-ups, ask your guests to text you their car model and color. That way, you can run their food out to them without second-guessing whose take-out bag belongs with which vehicle.

Those are several things we have seen helping with take-out and pickups, and not just for restaurants. Similar strategies are being applied for picking up products and waiting for services at other businesses.

When we launched NoshList in 2012, we began with a very targeted focus on the restaurant industry and a mission to solve the challenges many restaurants face in managing long wait lines. And it worked. Customizable, easy-to-use and affordable, our wait list app enhanced the customer experience and quickly replaced the antiquated pen and paper lists for our customers.

Over the past two years, NoshList has been used to seat more than 45 million diners, and the new reservations feature helps with a whole new set of scheduling challenges that restaurants face.

Along the way though, we realized that NoshList can be used in a host of other industries. Other types of businesses started using NoshList in ways we hadn’t originally expected, and as they did they asked us for ways to better customize the product for their situations. So little by little we started adding more customization features, and now all kinds of businesses are using NoshList to improve their customers’ wait experience.

Since NoshList can be used on iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, other mobile devices, and even computers, the app can be used just about anywhere. All that’s needed is an Internet connection and a desire to make waits more bearable for customers.

Afterall, when a customer is waiting on anything — from a lane at the bowling alley to a rented boat — the wait can be like an extreme lesson in patience. NoshList works as a way to communicate with waiting parties that their lane, boat or other item is ready.

How about waiting in line for a dressing room? With NoshList, shoppers can simply add their name to the list and then continue to shop while they wait for their dressing room. Once it’s ready, they will receive a text notifying them they’re next in line. It’s the ultimate win-win.

The same ideas apply to anywhere there might be a wait — at the pharmacy, the automotive repair center, the doctor’s office or hair salon and spa.

There are few simple things businesses in other industries can do to best use NoshList. The main thing is to customize the texts that go out when a person is added to any type of wait list and when they are notified. NoshList users can also choose from a number of automated call options. Then for more personalization a business can pre-define the list of the most common notes to appear in the app with the QuickNotes feature. Finally, table numbers can be modified to represent what makes sense for a business. These numbers could represent a salesperson, chair number, rental ID or whatever resource is assigned to your customers.

To learn more, check out our new page on how NoshList is being for different business waitlists across the country.

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.”

NoshList continues to be used by more industries beyond restaurants. From urgent care centers to educational businesses and bowling alleys, the wait list app is forever changing how businesses interact with their customers. To make the experience even better, WaitList has just released a number of new features for customizing the waitlist and notifications process.

Customized Waitlist View

Many places serve individual customers rather than large groups or parties, so we have included an option in the settings that will simplify the waitlist view and flow for adding customers to not show party size. Similarly, many places will assign customers to a person or something that isn’t numerical like a table number, so we have made it easier to add and display longer descriptions. For example, a salon can assign customers to the name of a salonist rather than a number. There is more space in the waitlist view to display names and you can enter all the people or resource names you want to assign customers to in the “Manage Assignments” part of the settings. We still have the old view for any restaurants or places that track group sizes, and you can change this in the “Customize Waitlist” part of the settings. You can also change the display of the “Reservations” section if your business makes appointments rather than reservations.

Example of waitlist for individuals, with no parties column and more room for assignments:

Example of waitlist for parties, with group size column:

Customized Notifications

We have had the ability to customize text and phone notifications from the NoshList website, and now we have also added that to the settings in apps. Just go into the Settings and choose the “Manage Notifications” option.

View for customizing text notifications:

View for customizing phone call notifications:

Simpler Waitlist

Instead of having separate buttons to seat and remove customers, we have combined these into a single check button for checking people off the list. When pressing on that you can choose to “Check off” the people that have been seated or served or you can choose to “Delete” them if they canceled or walked away before it was their turn. To make the waitlist history easier to find, we have changed the toggle for displaying history to appear below the waitlist, where the history will actually appear rather than in a button in the upper left that was often missed in our user testing.

All of these updates are currently in the latest version of the NoshList Waitlist app and in the online waitlist on www.Waitlist.me and the customizable waitlist is in the Android app. Changing the notifications and the new history view will be coming to Android soon.

You’ve been the curious customer discovering a new spot, so you know just how promising it feels to walk in a restaurant and see happy people eating mouth-watering food. You’ve also been the hungry diner who’s waited an hour before discovering that the hostess somehow missed your name on the list roughly 10 tables ago. Cue the toe-tapping, eyeball-rolling, and finger-pointing.

As a consumer, you want to see your favorite restaurants doing good, steady business. After all, you want your neighborhood picks to stick around! However, you don’t want to experience the downsides of busyness: interminable waits, lost reservations, and poor customer service.

That’s why we built Waitlist Me. Here at Waitlist Me, we’re creating customer service technology that helps you manage your guests more efficiently and effectively. Five-star review, here you come!

What is Waitlist Me?

Waitlist Me puts your customers right where they should be: at the front of your mind. It’s an app that’s designed to make it easy for your front-of-house staff to keep track of both your waitlist and your reservations. We keep it all in one at-a-glance place so that you’ll never lose another name again. Phew!

How does Waitlist Me work?

The days of grease pens and messy paper appointment books are over. Waitlist Me is the forward-thinking tech your service-oriented business needs. And you know what? It’s an absolute cinch to use. We designed Waitlist Me to be intuitive for everyone to use, no matter how comfortable you are with smart devices. You can set it up for your business during an afternoon lull and train your staff to use it in minutes.

After that, you’re good to go! With a few taps, Waitlist Me lets you add walk-ins to your waitlist. With just one look, you can see how long they’ve been waiting and when their table should be ready. And once they hit the front of the line, you can forget about hollering out a last name. Instead, one more touch on the Waitlist Me app will let you send them a text notification right to their phone. No matter where they are—the parking lot, a nearby store, or hanging out in your lobby—they’ll know exactly when it’s their turn to take a seat.

 It doesn’t get any easier than that.

And Waitlist Me isn’t just for restaurants, either

Sure, Waitlist Me is an obvious must-use for restaurants, but scores of other businesses are using our app every day to make their businesses run better—and keep their customers walking through the door.

Who’s using Waitlist Me?

• Big box retailers that rely on sales associates to sell big-ticket items, like televisions, computers, and smartphones
• Jewelry stores helping individuals pick out special gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays
• Recreation centers, like bowling alleys, ice rinks, and arcades
• Gyms and fitness centers that see high traffic volume on certain pieces of equipment
• Doctor’s offices and veterinary clinics with urgent care 
• Hair and nail salons that offer a variety of walk-in services
• Retail chains, specialty boutiques, and consignment shops to allow for more one-on-one time between employees and customers