Going out for dinner is one of the most common plans among people, even more if it is about group reunions in special dates. The problem that we usually find is going to our favourite restaurant and, because of the amount of people, do not have an available table for the moment that we go. In these cases, we must wait until any of the other tables is finished with their meal or we have to search another place with an available table for us.
To avoid this kind of situations the restaurant should put a solution. In this post e are going to explain how an online booking system as Bookitit can optimize your restaurant and avoid the lost of customers.
The benefits that Bookitit is going to contribute to your business are the following:
1. When important dates are arriving, as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter and other festivities, it is habitual that your restaurant gets full and there’s no available tables. To avoid the arriving of clients that won’t be able to be attended, the best solution is to incorporate to your business an online scheduling software.
In this way, your clients can see in real time the availability of your tables. Once the booking is done your customers will go to your local at the booked time without worries.
2. Having an online appointment booking software is going to help you to know in advance some details of your costumers, for example, if some of the persons that is going to arrive to your restaurant is celiac, vegetarian, vegan, diabetic, allergic to some ingredient or have any other condition.
Knowing in advance these situations is necessary to a better kitchen management. Avoid this kind of unforeseen situations and counting with all the necessary ingredients is going to optimize the work inside the kitchen and to avoid delays.
3. Besides, your restaurant can offer different services that can interest to your clients more or less. For example, you can offer tables inside the restaurant or on the terrace. Probably some of your customers will prefer to book a table on the terrace or, in the contrary, they will prefer keeping inside the salon. In any case, the best way of make sure that the place that the costumer wants is available at the time of the booking is to make an online booking.
4. On the other side, it is important that your business has presence on the Internet. Nowadays people search information about your business through the web to know the location, the opinions and reviews of other costumers, to see the offered menu, etc. In this way, offering the comfort of making online bookings for the tables is a success.
Your clients will see in the moment at which time a table is available for the number of people that is going to go to the restaurant and in which place (salon or terrace). By selecting the menu that they want, it will be assured a highest speed of the plates to the table and to avoid unnecessary waiting times.
5. It is evident that counting with an online scheduling system as Bookitit you will simplify the work of your employee. We know that working in a restaurant is very stressful and takes a lot of effort. Picking up the phone will be one less work to do by your employees if you decide to work with an appointment scheduling software. You will only have to check your Booking Calendar in which will be updated in real time all the bookings that your clients are doing.
This is how you can configure Bookitit so that it accomplishes the needs of your restaurant:
-The services that you offer will be determined by the time that the bookings take. If, generally, the bookings for the tables for lunch time, take less time than the bookings of he tables for dinner time, we would establish two different services: one for lunch and one for dinner. Inside each service we would establish their duration, for example, 60 minutes for lunch and 120 minutes for dinner.
To configure the service so that it allows several persons with only one booking, it is necessary to configure the type of service inside its edition panel in advances configurations. Inside this configuration you will be able to establish the minimum persons for the booking and the maximum. With this, it is possible that a person makes a booking for a table for four.
Besides, inside the advanced configuration of the service we will have the possibility of establishing the schedule of each one of the services. In this way, the lunch time could be established between 12:30 and 15:30 and the dinner time from 20:00 to 22:30.
– About the agendas, each one of them will be the space that you will have available. That is, if your restaurant counts with two salons and two terraces, you will have four agendas. Besides, these agendas should be configured by turns, establishing the maximum capacity of each space. In this way, when the customers are going to make and online booking, they will see how many available slots there are for the time in which they are going to your restaurant.
– Another of the Bookitit functionalities that will adapt to your restaurant is the possibility for the clients of sending you comments in the moment of the booking. This is very useful to inform about allergies, for example. IN this way, knowing about this information in advanced, you will speed up the situation in the kitchen and unforeseen situations will be avoided.
– On the other side, you have the possibility of confirming the bookings before they are included in your Bookitit Booking Calendar. If you configure this option, each time that your clients make a booking of any of your tables, you will be sent automatically an e-mail from where you can confirm or reject the booking. This gives you a higher control of the bookings
– The Bookitit Calendar presents different options of viewing. You can obtain a weeks view to know the amount of work that you will have the following days, an agendas view to know which spaces are going to be more full and more empty, and a day view, which will help you with the organization and management of your restaurant and kitchen short term.
How do my customers book?
1. Firstly, the customers will have to choose the type of service that they want. Following the case that we have described before, they will have to choose between lunch or dinner. In this same step they will have to choose the number of persons that are going to the restaurant.
2. Next, they will have to choose where they want to book the table. In this case, they will have to choose between salon or terrace.
3. After, they will have to choose the date and time of the booking. Here it will only be shown the schedule possibilities that you will have established before. In case of lunch time, it will only possible to choose among 12:30 and 15:00 in time intervals of one hour and, in case of dinner time they will only be able to choose among 20:00 to 22:30 in time intervals of two hours.
4. Once the date and time is chosen, the customers will have to introduce some personal information, such as their name, e-mail and telephone number.
Besides, they will be able to add comments in necessary case. If the customers already have an account, they simply will have to introduce their e-mail and password.
The booking will appear in the same moment in your Bookitit Booking Calendar. However, if you have configured the option of appointment confirmation, first you will have to confirm it from your e-mail so that it appears in the calendar next to the rest of the bookings.
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