Make your table management more efficient by viewing the waitlist on the same screen as table assignments. Split screen mode, currently available for iPads, will allow you to handle the waitlist while simultaneously managing table turnover.

Press the circle icon on the top left of the waitlist to go to the table management or assignments view.

Press Open in the footer bar to show the waitlist in the bottom half of the screen.

The waitlist, as well as today’s reservations, will now be visible. Drag the bar up or down to adjust the height of the waitlist to fit your needs.

From this view you can still add parties to the list, notify guests when you are ready for them, and check parties off the list. All of the waitlist view features are available without leaving the table management view.

Waitlist Me makes table management simple and effective. Our unique approach to section and resource management provides an intuitive tool that restaurant staff can pick up in a few minutes and enjoy using.  If you haven’t set up your sections yet, you can see how to do that here.

Check out more ways to get the most out of Waitlist Me by visiting our Knowledge Base.

Building on the set of resource management features we rolled out a couple months ago, we have added more flexibility for creating and tracking custom resource statuses. These statuses can be used to visually highlight different stages of your occupied resources in different colors to help make assignment decisions faster and easier.

Here is a new video on resource management, including the new custom statuses:

For example, say you are managing restaurant tables and using Waitlist Me to view what tables are available or occupied. You can sort tables by the times they have been occupied for a better sense of which ones will become available first. Now with custom statuses you could improve on those estimates even more by changing the states of tables that are waiting for their bill or being cleaned. Marking tables with customers waiting for their checks as “billing” can give your bus boys a heads up on which tables would need cleaning soon. Similarly, you can change the status of tables to “cleaning” when they are being cleared and prepped. Using more detailed statuses can help your staff at the front of the house know what tables will be available soon, which means they can quote better wait time estimates and seat customers faster. This means more revenue for the restaurant through more table turns and improved customer satisfaction.

This is just one example of how it might work in a restaurant, but the flexibility of the naming and usage of statuses means they can be tailored to different processes in different businesses.

To change a status in Waitlist Me, all you have to do is press on the resource and an action bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. This area shows information on customers currently occupying and waiting for the resource, and has actions for moving and clearing customers. Pressing on the status on the left will bring up a list of statuses, and selecting one will change the status and color of the resource. In the list view, just tap on the status color to change it.

Note that when you choose a custom status you can see both the total time a resource has been occupied as well as the time spent in the current status, which is shown in parenthesis. This makes it easy to see total visit times and times in specific statuses at a glance, so you can tell if a certain stage is causing more delays than others and how that might be affecting total wait times.

Accompanying the custom statuses are a couple of new sorting options in the Grid view, where you can view your resources grouped by Status. Select “Status the ABC” to have all the statuses grouped together and then ordered alphabetically by the resource name or “Status then Time” to have them ordered by the length of time they have been in that particular status.

To customize your statuses, go to your Settings and then press on “Manage Resources” and then again on the “Statuses” in the upper right. In addition to the default “available” (green) and “occupied” (red) statuses, you can add four of your own statuses. Just add the names and move the sliders on the right to turn them on or off. Statuses will show alphabetically in the options when you select them, so you can set the naming accordingly. The green and red statuses for available and occupied resources are always required, and custom statuses are treated as states of an occupied resource.

Want an way for your customers to check their place in line?  Now you can easily display your public waitlist view on any TV screen through a new integration with Enplug. It’s great for your customers, as they can just glance at a TV screen to see their place in line instead of constantly wondering or asking how much longer they need to wait.

View of public waitlist on TV screen

View of waitlist managed on Waitlist Me

The Enplug device streams digital content onto any TV or display, so businesses can browse through a collection of apps to engage their audience, including Graphics (HD images and videos), Live Social Wall, News, Weather, Directory, Web Page, and now Waitlist Me. Apps and display settings can be instantly managed through Enplug’s web dashboard.  The integration with Waitlist Me is very intuitive, so it is simple for any business to set up and manage.

“Waitlist Me is the first third-party app available to our customers,” said Alex Ross, Chief Operating Officer, Enplug. “They’ve done a fantastic job at integrating their waitlist app software using our SDK. We want to provide our customers with as much great marketing content as possible, and Waitlist Me allows us to do exactly that.”

The integration with Enplug also marks an important milestone for Waitlist Me as the first publicly announced use of the Waitlist Me API.  The Waitlist Me API allows third parties to build Waitlist Me features into their websites and applications.  It can be used to display and customize the public waitlist view appears, add and remove parties, register users and more. For companies interested in using the API, please send an email to [email protected]

Whether you run a four-star fine dining establishment or a seasonal fish fry favorite, the tools you use have the potential to make your restaurant…or break it.

Forget the grease pens of yore. Forget the phone ringing off the hook during dinner service. Forget the harried servers with too-full sections (and the bored ones with too little to do). Waitlist Me Pro is the tool you need to upgrade your table, resource, and reservation management.

Here are four ways the Waitlist Me Pro app can transform your restaurant business:

Divide and conquer

Tradition belongs in your food, décor, and customer service, not in your floorplan. Waitlist Me Pro scraps the laminated restaurant layout and multi-colored grease pens in favor of an at-a-glance resource management system that shows hosts instantly what tables are available, what tables should be flipping soon, and which sections should be prioritized.

The pro-level resource management features let you create different sections in your restaurant depending on the time of day, staffing, holidays, special events—anything you can think of that would change the way you allocate your tables and your servers. Save your section layouts and enlist them with a swipe of the finger. Done!

Keep waiting customers happier with better wait estimates

With Waitlist Me Pro, even the greenest of hostesses can give an accurate quote to a customer waiting for a table. The app tracks the current amount of time a groups have been at a particular tables and makes it easy to see what tables have upcoming reservations or have been assigned to waiting customers. This visibility helps hosts predict exactly when waiting customers can expect to be seated.

Bonus: Sorting by time within sections makes it easy to see which sections have more available tables and which tables have been occupied the longest and are most likely to open up soon.  Additional statistics at the top of each section show the available tables and seats as well as the percentage of tables filled so it is simple to know where to seat the next customer.

Know your numbers

Don’t just guess how many staffers you need on hand for happy hour or holiday parties, or if you should change your sections or table layouts around.  Waitlist Me Pro offers resource utilization reportsto help you make better decisions.

The app tracks your usage data, so that you can creates reports based on various parameters. How quickly are you turning over tables? How many sections should you have on a Saturday night? Can you get away with one less server during brunch? Waitlist Me Pro’s reports will help you answer these types of questions and more.

Build your brand

When competition is stiff, you need to leverage every opportunity to differentiate yourself and your dining experience from the other restaurants in your area. Waitlist Me Pro offers you a chance to stand out from the very first point of contact.

The app’s pro subscription level allows you to add your branding to the web widget, public waitlist, and customer notifications. The public waitlist personalization, in particular, includes options to change the color scheme, status messages, and personalize the HTML at the bottom of the page so you can suggest loyalty programs, list daily specials, or display other information.

Running a restaurant isn’t the same as it was a couple years ago.  With the introduction of government mandates regarding COVID-19, technology has shaped customer expectations around service in all parts of their lives, and people are less willing to put up with unnecessary waiting to get the goods and services they want. Fortunately, there are applications like Waitlist Me that help restaurants and other businesses raise the bar and deliver at a higher level of service that meets today’s expectations.

Cut the clutter and stay organized

When the phone is ringing off the hook at the front desk, it can be near impossible for a frazzled host to serve the line of customers spilling out of the entrance, waiting to be acknowledged. Forget grease pens and paper planners. Waitlist Me eliminates hostess stand clutter and makes it easy to add and seat dining parties. Your front of house staff can see your business’ waitlist in a single glance and add customers to it with a swipe.

Over-deliver on wait expectations

With Waitlist Me, even a rookie host can quote accurate wait times and set the right expectations. The app shows real-time waits next to quoted times to make it easy to improve and know when things are running ahead or slow. Using status colors and notes to organize and keep tabs on waiting customers helps you get them seated more efficiently. And with the smart historical wait estimate features available with Waitlist Me Pro, you can take into account the previous 4 weeks of data to get more accurate estimates. You can’t always control the wait time, but you can improve the wait experience by serving customers on time, when you say you will.

Set your guests free

With so many new mandates on restaurant capacities, having guests wait in the lobby is no longer an option for many businesses. The text notification feature does away with diners’ worries about losing their place in queue without requiring them to physically be there. No more looking for a socially distanced area around your hostess stand, and no more long queues stretched 6 feet apart around the corner turning off new walk-ins. Whether they choose to window shop, walk down the block, or hang out in the car, one quick text lets them know when their table is ready. All you have to do is tap a button, and the customer will be paged instantly.

Give people visibility into their wait

The number one question your host doesn’t want to answer when it’s busy: Is my table ready yet? A close second: Where are we on the list? Waitlist Me keeps customers in-the-know automatically with its popular public waitlist feature. Once they’re added to your waitlist, they’ll receive a text confirmation that includes a link to your public waitlist that they can check in their phone browser (no app download required). In real time, they’ll see exactly where they are in the queue along with their wait time.

Never lose a reservation

The worst problem customers face on busy nights or big holidays is lost reservations. When your restaurant relies on overstuffed date books, though, hostesses get used to saying, “What was the name again? I’m not seeing it in the book.” Your guests deserve better, and Waitlist Me helps you stay organized and manage your reservations in one location that you can access from multiple iPads or Android tablets. You can even login from your home computer or your smartphone to keep tabs on your reservations.

Make waiting less painful with Waitlist Me.