It has been a while ago since I last touched the theme of Restaurant reservation systems. New York Times runs a story about the success of OpenTable, which wasn’t exactly an overnight success. The thing that pushed OpenTable over the edge toward accept…

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The point made above is true, when I researched the market there were lots of POS vendors and separately a few reservation vendors none with an integrated system. Many of the POS vendors offered some kind of plug in to a reservation system or vaguely talked about being able to do it.

From my experience in other industries (and this definitely includes the restaurant business) owners want easy to use but sophisticated systems which are fully integrated with each other. So in a restaurant the POS, Stock, Pricing, Reservations and Accounts etc should be easily operated from the one terminal – be that a touch screen or other-wise.

Some of our customers have been so frustrated with this lack of integration that they are happy to switch from a perfectly decent touch screen POS or accounts system to roll out our solution which allows them full integration.

I also fully agree that any reservation system has to be focused on the customer, as well as having the smart features that integration with a POS system gives the restaurant. The four features above are a perfectly valid customer wish list. However I think there is an oft-made, important mistake in that everyone does things different, including which restaurant to visit and so individual’s wish lists can be very different. For example many people do like to plan which restaurant to visit and with whom well in advance. Many people visit the same place on a regular basis and not just walk in off the street. A system provider has to cater for all these (and many other) customer needs and design a system which is sophisticated and also easy to use.

I don’t think online reservation systems are a fad, the internet is real and more and more people are expecting to be able to check availability of restaurants and book tables online. Our customers are asking for these systems to capture these people in order to increase footfall and revenues. This can only be done by having a properly integrated POS and Reservation system which works over the internet.

At the start of any market there are always the technology-led vendors who will die off or bodge a solution with an existing player. The real value is in integrated solutions provided by companies who understand and meet business needs with technology as an enabler.

Victor Porter, Eveve Software Ltd

I have a completely different point of view from you.

Thinking as an operator, with a unique selling proposition such as great chef, great food, great ambience, great location, I should be COMPETING with every other operator in the marketplace. Such an operator has no desire to be part of a “me too” listing or portal where he might get a share of the cake. Such an operator does not want to pay commission on bookings but wants to capture his own data on customers (who want to come to his restaurant in preference to others) and then to market to them his offer in exclusion to all others. We do live in a capitalistic society where the BEST win and thrive.

The 4 points you list are ideal for operators who are mediocre and content (desperate)to accept their “share” provided by portals.

An integrated epos / reservation system solution should have data feeds from the epos system to the reservation / table management / yield management / CRM system such as http://www.restaurantdiary.com. A browser based system is ideal for this as there is one point of entry for data capture but that data can be accessed and used from anywhere with an Internet connection. Also, with the application hosted on a remote server the solution can be very competitive in price with traditional PC or client / server solutions. I think Bill Gates agrees but what does he know?

The reason why operators use such a system as http://www.restaurantdiary.com is because of increased profitability (we are happy to let ANY independent expert assess the yield improvement in ANY of our operator’s units) and inbuilt marketing by SMS or email to their OWN customer database.

We agree that operators would prefer to have one hardware footprint front of house and as most epos systems now operate on TCP/IP it is a natural progression to an integrated solution where the data is shared but the operator can switch quickly from Epos to reservations using the same processor and screen.

Watch this space!

Regards

Mike Conyers

Thanks for your reaction. I am glad to hear that at least some providers of reservation systems do have knowledge of the field they work in. As I stated above, most people I have talked with are ‘techies’ and web developers.

It is also good to hear that your business is growing. But I seriously think that part of the sudden huge interest in restaurant reservation systems is basically a hype. I still doubt whether many of the current users actually benefit from such a system, and wait until somebody performs an independend ROI analysis to prove so.

Integration with EPOS systems is always a difficult subject, as there are many POS manufacturers and even more companies who want to plug their system. That means that you will have to make agreements with hundreds of suppliers to cover a significant section of the market. In my view POS manufacturers will wait until there is an international standard for communicating reservation data. Until that moment some of them will probably try to create such a system themselves, and fail in doing so because of lack of market share.

I would like to know your view on the four points in which I described my ‘ideal’ resevation system. Are you planning such features?