Over the last decade, the restaurant week concept has found its way to communities across the United States. Conceived by restaurateur Joe Baum and Tim Zagat of the Zagat Survey, restaurant week has led to huge gains for the food and beverage industry. Some restaurants have seen as high as a 40-percent increase in customer volume during the promotional period.

Because many restaurant week customers are first-timers, this period is also the ideal time for dining establishments to capture repeat business. Ready to score some new regulars? Here’s how to wow everyone who walks through your door during restaurant week.

Land a great first impression

In Waitlist Me HQ’s hometown, Charleston, S.C., restaurant week is a twice-yearly event with additional, neighborhood-specific weeks thrown into the mix as well.  Many a hidden gem have earned stand-out word-of-mouth rep thanks to excellent restaurant week showings.

Earning that sweet referral business starts the moment your guests walk through the door. Comfortable seating, warm lighting, and plenty of heated or cooled space for guests to stand upon entry are vital. If you’re planning on making any upgrades, do so before the week is set to start—and if you’re painting or doing anything odiferous, schedule your refresh with plenty of time to air out any lingering fumes.

Craft a memorable menu

One restaurant week bummer we hear about regularly is this one: Chefs create delectable special menus, but they’re devoid of house specialties that new customers are hoping to try during the promotion.

Depending on your restaurant’s price-point and the promotional restrictions enforced by your restaurant week’s organizer, it might not be possible for you to offer all the goodies that are must-haves for your regular menu. We encourage you to try to find a way to bring popular picks to this more limited menu, too. Appetizer portions and tasting platters are two possible ways to make this happen.

Get the word out early

Large-scale community events are typically coordinated by a local chamber of commerce or another business-oriented organization. For restaurant weeks, food and wine festivals, and other tasty opportunities, these orgs tend to put together event guides or listings. To maximize your customer volume, it’s essential that your business be included in these publications.

Figuring out what you need to do to get your restaurant on the map, so to speak, is a cinch. Some tech-savvy chambers will offer orientation-style information online for restaurant owners and managers. However, you can always call your chamber to find out what information you need to send to the right people. Remember, they’re there to help!

Upgrade your customer service tech

Of all the bad times to have a waitlist snafu, restaurant week is one of the worst. We created Waitlist Me so that your restaurant doesn’t have to worry about getting your guests from your waiting area to your dining room; our tech helps you quote more accurate times and prevent walkaways.

Waitlist Me is a simple waitlist and reservation app that you can implement today. With a single glance, your host can see how many people are in line, how long they’ve been waiting, and when they’ll make it to their table. You can also easily add our web widget to your restaurant’s website and let your customers hop in line from wherever they are.

Did you know you can add a button to your Facebook page to take reservations or appointments? Allowing customers to book directly from social media is easy, and a great way to increase bookings.

Start by logging into your Waitlist Me account and copying the unique link for your hosted Web Widget. You can find this at www.waitlist.me > Account > Settings > Add Yourself. The link will be at the top of the page.

Next, go to your business’s Facebook page. Choose the Add a Button option on the right.

Choose Book with you, and then Book Now.

Select the Link to Website option, enter your Waitlist Me link in the pop up, press Save and then Finish. That’s it! You now have your very own reservation (or appointment) button on Facebook.

Waiting is a universal problem.  Wherever you are, it is painful to have to wait for your turn at a restaurant, barber shop, store, or other business.  And businesses suffer from lower customer satisfaction and lost revenues when wait experiences are not managed well.

That is why we are happy to announce that Waitlist Me is now available in over 60 countries!  Check out our international plans page to see if it is live in your country.

One of the challenges in offering the service globally is that prices to send SMS text messages in other countries are generally higher than in the US and Canada.  The prices also vary considerably from country to country, and often even by mobile carrier within a country.  We have addressed this by having a flexible system for charging for text messages separately, with pricing for these texts depending on the country.  There is also more control in the Waitlist Me app over when to send confirmation and notification texts, so businesses don’t waste money sending a text that isn’t needed.  Since texts are not included in monthly subscription prices, we have lowered the price for Premium to $10 and Pro to $20 for international plans, and removed the 100 party limit on the Basic free level of features.

In terms of localization, all the customer facing parts of the Waitlist Me service have been translated into 30 languages, so businesses can send out texts and display their public waitlist pages in local languages with even our basic service.  With Premium and Pro they can customize the messaging even more for these and other features.  The Waitlist Me app that businesses use is still in English, but we’ll be fully localizing this in more languages over time.  The nice thing though about the Waitlist Me service is that the core processes of adding, notifying, and checking people off the list are very simple, and don’t require a lot of reading or knowledge of English.

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

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]