Saturday, December 15th, 2018 .

As you deck the halls and adjust your playlists, you should seriously consider giving your waitlist and table management system an update, too. With holiday parties a-plenty, this is no time for clutter and inefficiency!

You need to reboot your hostess stand and kick that datebook-and-grease-board duo to the curb. We have a shiny digital solution that will keep your season truly merry and bright—and save you plenty of woe (and money) to boot. We’re talking about a waitlist app that brings your queue, your reservations, and your resources together on one easy-to-use interface. It’s called Waitlist Me Pro.

Why do you need it? Let us count the ways:

#1. You need an intuitive way to balance walk-ins and reservations

What’s worse than losing a reservation fora twosome on date night? Losing a reservation for a 12-top the week before Christmas. Yikes. Still, it happens.It’s easy to forget a group—yes, even a big one—when you’re struggling to handle the nightly dinner rush.

When you upgrade your restaurant to a digital waitlist and reservation system, you say “goodbye” to misplaced reservations.With Waitlist Me Pro, you can use our flexible reservation views to see what your restaurant has in store for the holiday season and beyond. Plus, we built the app to incorporate reservations and walk-ins seamlessly. That makes it a cinch to navigate your guest list, no matter what.

#2. You need to visualize the best places to seat parties in your restaurant

Forget about peering behind the hostess stand to survey available seating options. Your hosts won’t even have to squint at hard-to-decipher grids anymore, either! With simple, digital table and resource management, confusion over where to seat your large and small parties is a relic of yesteryear.

Waitlist Me lets you view your tables indifferent ways, including by availability, by size, and by server. They’recolored coded so that you can immediately tell what’s open and what’s not. The Pro-level version of the app also gives you access to our layouts and sections feature, which allows you to build more detailed floor plans that are still easy to read.

#3. You need to keep bringing in foot traffic, no matter how busy you are

A wall of waiting guests in your lobby is intimidating to newcomers. To them, one large group waiting for a few tables to be pushed together can look like a dozen parties—and that’s enough to make anyone want to try the restaurant down the street rather than risk a queue.

Technology can transform your vestibule and the way you run your restaurant. With Waitlist Me’s text notification feature, you can set your guests free. Instead of lingering around your hostess stand, waiting for their name to be called, they can hang out at the bar or wander around the area without worrying about losing their table. When they’re next in line, you can let them know, no shouting necessary.

#4. You need to ensure that all your guests have a great experience

With a paper waitlist and reservation system, you’re constantly flipping back and forth and scrabbling around for notes. It’s unprepared and unprofessional, and that’s frustrating for your hosts and for your customers. And ETAs? Let’s not even go there.

Our app brings a new level of sophistication to eating out. We designed it to be easy to use from the get-go,which will decrease employee training time. And because Waitlist Me is so simple, hosts can focus their attention where it should be: on the guests,rather than on the paper they use to keep track of them.

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 .

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.

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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.

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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.

Friday, October 30th, 2015 .

Looking for an easier way to take reservations?  Waitlist Me has a new feature for customers to schedule reservations (or appointments) from your website, and it as easy as adding a link or line of code to set up.

You don’t need to set up any complicated rules for how many reservations are available at what times, as reservation requests will come to you for quick approvals within the Waitlist Me app.  You’ll receive a notification alert so you know when to check, and reservation requests will be highlighted at the top of your main waitlist page as well as on the daily reservation views.

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When you approve a request in the app, the customer automatically gets a confirmation text with their time, and the request becomes a confirmed reservation and appears in the reservations area of Waitlist Me.  If you decline it, the customer receives a text notifying them that it could not be scheduled.

The new remote reservation feature builds on the previous remote adding functionality for waitlists, so now businesses can choose between options of allowing customers to add themselves to the waitlist, schedule reservations, or both.

To enable the feature, log into Waitlist Me, go to the Settings area, and then choose to customize the Public Waitlist Page.  From there you can turn on remote reservations and customize things like the information you require from customers, whether you’d like to skip the approval step to have them automatically scheduled, and more.

Here is how the Settings look:

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The Public Waitlist is one are where customers can see the Make Reservation option.

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And when they press on that it will allow them to enter their info and requested reservation time.

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Another option is to use the Widget on your own website.  Here is an example of how that looks and you can customize the look and feel of the web widget in the Waitlist Me settings.

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Friday, December 7th, 2018 .

Ah, the sounds of the season are upon us! Tinkling bells, rustling wrapping paper, and the voices of children and adults alike, eager to jump into winter with both snow-booted feet.

Here at Waitlist Me, we’re all about traditions—well, some traditions. The seasonal kind that come with snow, Santa hats, and sweet treats? Bring it on! The long lines of, well, last year? No thanks. Our app puts more ease into the winter season, which helps everyone get the most out of it. For businesses, it means more loyal customers walking in the door and opening their wallets. For consumers, it means a better time no matter what they’re up to.

Wondering how a waitlist app can make a difference when it comes to winter traditions? Here’s the proof in the figgy pudding:

Ice skating

Wobbling your way around a rink is a wintry rite of passage. A digital waitlist clears your lobby, allowing wannabe Olympians to grab a bite to eat or watch the crush while they wait to lace up a pair of skates. It’ll cut down the line intimidation factor, which can send fresh faces running back out into the parking lot for fear of a long wait. Plus, it’ll help your skate attendants focus on the customer at hand rather than the pile-up behind them.

Holiday shopping

Playing elf for your nearest and dearest isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. That’s where your sales associates come in. Put their product knowledge and creativity to work—and get the most out of your personnel scheduling—by creating an in-store personal shopping service. Waitlist Me makes it easy to manage. With its notes feature, you can leverage your employees’ strong suits. To utilize it, ask customers what they’re looking for when you add them to the list. Then, assign sales associates accordingly depending on their specialties.

Pictures with Santa

Corralling kids is a headache on the best of days. With candy canes and chocolate bars adding to the frenzy? Well, you’re looking at a true Nightmare Before Christmas situation. If you’re running a mall Santa-style operation, a waitlist app can make an incredible difference for the parents trying to keep their littles ones in line. With Waitlist Me, parents can join a waitlist and take their tots off to toddle around (and work off some of that energy). When the big guy in the suit is ready, the app sends them a text. Easy.

Christmas tree hunting

Come Thanksgiving, there are scads of parking lots stacked with blue spruce and Frasier fir trees. For tree farmers and sellers looking to head home before Santa packs his sleigh, customer service is essential in order to stand out from the crowd. Get in the game by helping your customers one-on-one. Add each tree-peeper to your waitlist when they walk onto your lot and dispatch an assistant to help them pick the tree that’s perfect for their holiday celebrations.

Community events

Whether you’re managing a Church holiday party, arranging auditions for a winter play, or manning a gift-wrapping booth to fundraise for a local charity, there are tons of seasonal reasons a waitlist might come into play. Use it to maintain order, prevent petty squabbles, and let everyone enjoy their time with family and friends. A waitlist app disperses long lines, letting folks mingle instead of tethering them to a queue.

Wednesday, July 27th, 2016 .

We are happy to announce that our popular table and resource management features are now available for the online version of Waitlist Me that can be accessed on computer and tablet browsers.  Previously the resource management features were only available in our iPad and Android apps.

Whether you assign customers to tables, staff, or other resources, Waitlist Me resource management features help you make smart decisions faster and leads to better overall customer service.  Here is an example of how a salon might track which of their employees are available and who would be coming available soon.

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It is simple to see availability with the color of the status, and there is a count of minutes for how long they have been with a customer.  Notes and customer names give more context to how customers are being served at any given time.  Estimate times of customers waiting or with upcoming appointments with specific people or resources will also display to help know when to be ready for the next customer.

Customers can be moved between resources if needed, and when a customer is done they can be easily cleared.   Assignments are integrated with the waitlist so that when a customer that has been assigned a resource is checked off the waitlist, that resource will automatically switch to taken in the assignment view. If a customer was using that resource it will switch them with the new customer without any additional steps.

Customers can be assigned to one or more resources upon arrival or while waiting. When choosing assignments, available resources will show with a green status. Resources that are already assigned will have a red status and show the number of minutes they have been occupied with the current customer.

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If a customer is already assigned to a resource from the waitlist or as a reservation, the estimated serving time for that customer will show along with any notes that were added. Businesses that serve groups of customers can also define resource sizes and view those sizes in the status areas. For example a restaurant hostess seating a party could scan for open table sizes that would seat six or for smaller tables that could be combined.

The more you use Waitlist Me to manage assignments, the more data you will have on how well you are managing your resources, and there are a number of new downloadable reports that can be run in the Analytics section of the Waitlist Me site. Look for trends over time with the Assignment Overview, do deeper analysis with the more detailed data in the Assignment Logs, and see results split out by assignments and sizes in other reports.