As people flock to tourist destinations throughout the Northeast for their summer vacations, local restaurants are using Waitlist Me to handle the surge in demand. According to the National Restaurant Association, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are expected to hire a combined total of 100,000 new employees this summer to address the rush of seasonal customers, and restaurants are turning to technology to help manage it.

Many are using this new text-based app to increase customer satisfaction and improve business results. By using the Waitlist Me app, available on Android and iOS tablets, restaurants can track waiting guests and send them text notifications when their table is ready. This gives customers the freedom to explore the surrounding area while waiting for a table, which leads to fewer walkaways and greater customer satisfaction.

A little ways up the coast from Boston, the Portland Lobster Company is known for its award-winning Lobster Roll that customers can enjoy while sitting outside by the water. Open from May to October, they get about 70% of their traffic from tourists, and run waits of 30-35 minutes per night.

“We use Waitlist Me on a 10-inch Android tablet at the front for the hostess to add people to the list and estimate wait times, and the person bussing the tables has a 7-inch tablet to notify people that their table is available,” said Ethan Morgan, general manager at Portland Lobster Company. “This saves us a few minutes on each table, which adds up to shorter wait times and happier customers.”

With its open-air gazebo and large deck overlooking the Genesee River in Rochester, New York, Schooner’s Riverside Pub is another seasonal restaurant that has a perfect location for summer dining.  “We are slammed during the summer when people are enjoying the nice weather on our dock,” said manager Jake Clawson. “Waitlist Me has been super easy for us to use, our customers really like it, and it saves us a lot of time from having to walk around and track people down,” added hostess Liz.

“With nearly 70 million customers served, we continue to see strong growth among restaurants and other businesses, because Waitlist Me is easy to learn and use without any complicated contracts or training processes. It just works,” said Brian Hutchins, head of product and marketing for Waitlist Me. “We are always excited to see the way businesses are using our service to give their customers a better experience and Waitlist Me at summer hot spots is another great example of using tech to make customers happier.”

When your time is money, how you manage that time makes a difference. For many CEOs and executives, an ace admin team or executive assistant manages the schedule with aplomb. But regardless of how good your support staff is, there are always ways to make your office run more efficiently. Waitlist Me is one of those ways.

Waitlist Me is a waitlist management app that ensures everyone who needs face-time with the boss gets it, whether they need a 30-minute meeting or 60 seconds for a signature. Here are five ways Waitlist Me can transform your office.

Squeeze in meetings between appointments

Traditional calendars can make it difficult to spot and best utilize smaller blocks of open time. Waitlist Me makes it easy—and we let you color code everything according to, well, whatever you want. Supply each department with a color, or each type of appointment, and create the schedule that makes sense for you.

Set up office hours for drop-ins with staff

An open-door policy—or an occasional open-door policy—can do wonders for company culture, but it can also turn your hallways into long lines of employees who want CEO input. Waitlist Me helps create order by letting employees stay at their desks until go-time. Our text alert feature lets them know exactly when to knock on your door.

Give CEOs more control over who to see when

First come, first serve? That’s up to you. Waitlist Me lets you see key information at a glance on all the people needing your attention.  If you spot something urgent further down the list, it is a cinch to take that one first by sending a quick text to that person.  Or you may select items to clear off your list based on how much time you have available, whether you can cover an item in another meeting, how often you already see a particular person, or whatever you like.

Let employees book themselves into free time

Most assistants have far more on their docket than fielding requests for 5 minutes of your time. Take those calls off their plates by letting employees request quick appointments themselves. Waitlist Me’s Add Yourself feature lets them do just that—and you (or your admin) can quickly add them to your waitlist without turning the request into a full-blown conversation.

Keep employees from losing work-time waiting around

Nobody wants to see a parade of toe-tapping employees outside their office door. Nix it starting now thanks to our public waitlist feature. Staffers can check their place in line right from their work stations, which means they can increase their productivity without sacrificing the opportunity to get the input they need from you.

As the United States enters its second year living through the coronavirus pandemic, we’re all beginning to reach our limit. Individuals—including you, your customers, and your employees—are battling monumental levels of stress and burn-out, while businesses are still facing sink-or-swim moments.

An essential element of keeping our heads above water while the COVID-19 vaccines are distributed and herd immunity is achieved is finding ways to balance safety and living our lives. As a restaurant owner, you can help folks in your community reclaim parts of their normal, pre-COVID lives while being safety conscious.

Here are some ways to encourage customers to return for happy hour, date night, brunch, and beyond.

Make your safety protocols easy to access

Uncertainty around your safety protocols can influence concerned customers to stay home instead of visiting your restaurant, even if it’s just for take-out. 

Waitlist Me makes it easy to communicate important information to your customers via text message. Once they join your waitlist or make an appointment, you can remind them to mask-up, let them know where they can wait safely, inform them of food pick-up procedures, and more! Our public waitlist feature and add yourself features are also customizable.

Because we understand that your business needs can change, we make it easy to update your messaging. Whether it’s a dish-of-the-day or a new safety notice, you can tweak your text messages and your public waitlist quickly from the Waitlist Me settings.

Note: Remember to make your protocols (and everything else, like your menu and your payment system) easy for everyone to access. Have alternate delivery methods prepared and train your staff on how to use them. This accessibility guide from Toast can help you get started.

Enforce your business’ safety rules consistently

These days, there are few experiences more disheartening than finding a local business with solid COVID-19 safety protocols in place, only to visit in-person and observe that management isn’t enforcing those protocols.

Quality control is essential for small businesses. It’s what transforms your best dishes from one-hit wonders to house favorites. And, during a pandemic, it’s what gives your restaurant a five-star reputation for health and safety, both for your employees and your customers. Communicate your safety measures frequently, and make this communication and enforcement visible and audible to your visitors, too.

Note: Be clear with your management team and your staff about the safety protocols, how you will enforce them with your employees, and what enforcement powers they regarding guests. Spend time on this training. Indignant guests can be intimidating, and your team needs to be able to confidently and calmly diffuse tension while still enforcing the boundaries you’ve set.

Eliminate other sources of stress

Many areas are repeating the pattern of tightening restrictions, watching case levels decline, and reopening, which has guests and employees alike feeling like they can’t control their day-to-day life.

Waitlist Me can help you help them stress just a little bit less. When we first launched, our goal as a waitlist and reservation app was to set customers free from a designated waiting area. Thanks to our text message notifications and publicly visible waitlist, guests can wait where they’re comfortable—and can join your queue from wherever they are via our add yourself web widget.

Many of the features we’ve added over time empower business owners to help their clientele stress even less. Guests can save their place in line by texting your restaurant when they’re running late, and you can reply to them to clarify additional requests. You can also prevent last-minute confusion by providing menus and COVID-related changes on your website, add yourself page, and public waitlist page. 

Before you skip out the door for a little winter vacation, try to take 10 minutes to ponder the actions you can take in the new year to make your business more efficient, more beloved by customers, and more profitable. Whether you’ve got a long list of must-dos or are scratching your head, we’ve got one for you to consider: Download the Waitlist Me app.

Have nary a clue as to how one app can revolutionize your business in 2018? Here’s exactly how Waitlist Me will help make your business goals more achievable this year.

Resolution #1: Simplify your waitlist system

Forget grease pens and messy paper planners. Waitlist Me’s signature waitlist feature nixes hostess stand clutter. Now, your front-of-house staff can see your business’ waitlist in a single glance and add customers to it with a swipe.

Resolution #2: Neatly integrate a waitlist with your reservations or appointments

The premium-level Reservation feature offers seamless waitlist integration. In one app, you can track appointments as well as walk-ins and offer accurate wait time estimates to both types of customers. It’s the best of both worlds for restaurants, offices, service providers.

Resolution #3: Impress customers with great service

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.  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.

Resolution #4: Take the frustration out of long wait times

Our Text and Call Notifications combined with our Public Waitlist are designed to take headaches out waits for everyone. Customers are free to roam around the area, not worried about losing their place in line, and your staff can do their jobs without hungry diners asking when it’ll be their turn.

Resolution #5: Get it right the first time

Every level of Waitlist Me, from free to premium to pro, offers a Notes feature. Have a family that needs one high chair, two coloring pages, a gluten-free menu, and a wheelchair-accessible table? Make a note so that the party’s needs are front-and-center, no matter who seats them.

Resolution #6: Streamline your management

The Waitlist Me app was created to make your business easier to run, no matter how large or small. Multi-Device Sync lets you manage one account on extra computers, smartphones, or tablets—perfect for on-the-go businesses or large facilities—while Multi-Place Management lets regional and company-wide managers connect multiple locations to one (or more) Waitlist Me accounts.

Resolution #7: Become more customer-friendly

The premium-level Add Yourself widget and kiosk features and the pro-level business hours settings are easy-to-use tools that allow customers to join your waitlist or create a reservation without sitting on hold or waiting until you’re open. They’re available 24/7 from wherever your customer has internet access.

Resolution #8: Monitor your business’ productivity

Waitlist Me Pro allows you to track your resources. Whether you rely on table turnover, staff, special equipment, or something else entirely, our pro-level Resource Management feature tracks it for you, making it easy to see who and what is performing well and where you can make positive changes.

Resolution #9: Get more customer feedback

Comment cards not doing it for you? Our pro-level service incorporates Text Message Ratings and Customizable Survey features into the user experience. With a single text message reply or the click of a link, customers can quickly let you know what went right and what went wrong during their last visit.

Resolution #10: Make smarter business decisions

Don’t leave your biggest decisions up to guesswork. Waitlist Me Premium and Pro are loaded with our Reports feature. The in-app statistics track average wait times, business activity, demographics, customer loyalty, group size, and more. Plus, you can automate how you access the information via weekly email summaries or downloadable reports, making data one less thing you need to think about.

Renting shoes and perfecting the art of bowling-without-bumpers is a favorite memory of Waitlist Me’s app developers, and we’re thrilled that our favorite outing of old is back in favor with everyone from teens to millennials to families with kids.

Seeing a surge in your clown shoe-clad customers? Waitlist Me is a waitlist and reservation app that can help you smoothly manage the increase in traffic—and turn new customers into loyal fans.

Here are 3 ways our app can help any bowling alley gain new business (and improve customer service) today.

Prevent walk-outs when there’s a wait

A line at the door can make any strike-happy group turn tail and hit up a pizza parlor or movie theater, instead. Waitlist Me helps you keep customers regardless of your wait time. How? By making that line disappear.

Thanks to unlimited text notifications for users in the U.S. (and pay-as-you-go texting for Waitlist Me’s international plans), you can add groups to your waitlist and then let them roam free until a lane becomes available. They could grab cheese fries and a pitcher of beer at your snack stand, shoot pool and play PAC-MAN in your arcade, or window-shop their way down the street. When they’re first in line, you can send them a heads-up via text.

Perfect for:

– Bowling alleys with limited staffing (or a small waiting area)

– Checking in large groups during peak business hours

– Bowling alleys facing lots of local competing attractions

Give large groups a great time

You brought in snacks and arcade games to serve your bowlers better. But those add-ons don’t have to be after thoughts. Now, with large groups looking for impromptu hang-out spaces, your bowling alley is primed to offer a variety of fun options for everyone, including the non-bowlers in the bunch.

You can use Waitlist Me to give everyone a chance to do whatever it is that floats their boat…without making ‘em stand around in long lines by themselves. How? Waitlist Me is flexible enough to be used for people waiting for lanes, your in-house food area, or even popular games like air hockey.  Text ‘em when it’s their turn, ensuring that they’re never sacrificing quality time with friends and family to hold their place in line.  You can manage lines for different activities with status colors or even set up a separate waitlist for areas that have regular waits.

Perfect for:

– Booking birthday parties, office outings, and other celebrations

– Special events, like trivia nights and karaoke

– Attracting big crowds for bowling league competitions

Make it easy for customers to choose your bowling alley

Who wants a hassle for what should be a fun happy hour outing? Not your guests! That’s why it’s essential to make it a cinch for your customers to decide to shoot the breeze at your business rather than another spot down the block. A parking lot and food specials are a great way to get ‘em coming in your door. Another tool to have in your back pocket: Waitlist Me.

The app is built to handle waitlists and reservations side-by-side, so you can forget about that mess of sticky notes cluttering up your front counter. Customers can call before they come, walk right in, or even add themselves to your waitlist or make a reservation online. And, thanks to the public waitlist feature, they can check your ETA from wherever they are, whether that’s the water cooler, the bar next door, or the parking lot.

Perfect for:

– Catering to the after-work crowd

– Offering pop-up events

– Handling holidays and rainy summer afternoons