Reservation sites help diners avoid the wait

If you’ve ever wanted to grab a table at a popular eatery, you know the challenge that may await you.

Only a few of Salem’s many restaurants accept reservations and allow guests to sneak to the front of what are sometimes out-the-door lines.

Even fewer local restaurants accept online reservations — drop-ins and phone bookings remain the norm — despite the nationwide trend.

ReservationRow.com, a Web site that books reservations for you, lists about 60 Salem-area eateries and offers a searchable database of restaurants. Just fewer than half of the restaurants listed have a clickable online reservation button.

Bentley’s Grill in downtown Salem is the first area restaurant to try another online reservation site: Open Table.com.

Open Table and Restaurant Row are slightly different, the major difference being who pays for the service.

When using Open Table, the restaurant pays a fee for software that is installed on location and can manage both online and telephone reservations.

Mark Eichler, general manager at Bentley’s, would not say how much the restaurant paid for the service. However, according to the Open Table site, most restaurants make up the cost of the system in about four to six months. Pricing varies depending on the size and other characteristics of the restaurant.

“More people are still using reservations over the phone,” Eichler said, “but we’re seeing an increase each month in the number of online reservations.”

The purpose of the site is to make reservations more user-friendly and easier for guests. For walk-in diners, the wait at Bentley’s on a Friday night could be anywhere from zero to 15 or 30 minutes, Eichler said.

“Most everybody that I’ve talked to enjoys the system,” Eichler said. “They find it easy to use, and they appreciate being able to go to the Web site and make a reservation from there.”

Eichler said the site is popular with out-of-town guests who can make the reservation from their homes. Many of those people are already familiar with the Web site and can use it no matter where they are, he said.

 sbarchenger@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6750

http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080306/ENT03/803060318/1062

Pita chain uses mobile coupons to draw workers

Extreme Foods has tapped Cell­fire Inc. to move into the mobile coupon market for its Extreme Pita brand chain of fast food stores and offer consumers discounts at 27 stores across the country.

The company chose Cellfire after deciding that it wanted to be in the mo­bile space, but didn’t want to have to deal with collecting mobile phone numbers from its customers. The new partner­ship lets Extreme Pita acquire new cus­tomers through the Cellit mobile search network.

http://www.dmnews.com/Pita-chain-uses-mobile-coupons-to-draw-workers/article/107483/

Would You Like Fries With That Social Network ?

http://www.redherring.com/Home/23397

When you go to general social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, it’s really all about you,” CEO and co-founder Michael Atkinson said. “FohBoh is for you and by you …Our focus is on the industry rather than the consumer.”

The site features forums, blogs, and videos on topics ranging from fast food to artisan cheese making. And even though the site is focused on industry insiders, it also includes a restaurant review section. “We can’t help it,” said Mr. Atkinson.

According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry employs an estimated 13.1 million people, making it the nation’s largest employer outside of government. FohBoh hopes to tap into this $500 billion-plus U.S. market.

Online scalping’s next territory: High-end restaurants?

Some prominent figures in the New York hospitality industry don’t see much gray area. “I just find it distasteful and manipulative,” said Richard Coraine, chief of operations for the Union Square Hospitality Group, which operates several dining hot-spots like Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, and Tabla.

“We want to know you. We want you to talk to our reservation people. We want you to know our staff,” Coraine continued. “That’s really what gets to me, is that we have no relation-building opportunity in (reservation reselling sites). There’s an added price we can’t control, and that skews the value to us. It’s very parasitic in its nature, which I don’t find to be in keeping with the hospitality business.”

But it is different, because restaurant reservations typically do not come with a price tag–and putting a monetary value on it can just look tacky. “I’m already down a hundred when you walk in the front door, and that’s not something that I find palatable,” Coraine said in reference to the fact that a site like Tablexchange means that people are spending money on a restaurant that the restaurant never sees. “I want to control the entire value equation.”

Posted by Caroline McCarthy  http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9850164-36.html?tag=recentPosts

Operators are making better use of Web-based technology to reach customers.

Customizing information: Meanwhile, AVI Food Systems in Warren, Ohio, is testing one-on-one customized messaging with real-time communication of targeted messages to student laptops, PDAs and computers, says Dawn Perry, vice president of marketing. “We’re working on integration with Windows Vista software based on live feeds,” says Perry. “This generation is about customization or personalization just for them.”

At Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, AVI is tailoring food items to individual students’ tastes, and Perry says the operation has seen “a significant increase in sales.”

This fall at the University of California at Berkeley, Kim LaPean, marketing coordinator for CalDining, will be putting LCD screens at main retail locations “for quick marketing blurbs, similar to the Jet Blue mini-advertising before takeoff.” The screens will be placed where students wait in line and will have “short, relevant, fun, frequently updated” messages. “We’ll be working on some podcasting later this year,” LaPean adds.

At Virginia Tech University, Marketing & Communications Manager Katie Younger Gehrt implemented an interactive kiosk in a dining center as a way to give students nutrition information. It connects to the department’s Web site so users can access daily menus and calculate caloric intake. A Web page on the site will be updated to include both podcasts and video clips “as a way to quickly convey information in an engaging way.”

http://www.fsdmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74749

Go online to dine

It’s 7 a.m. and you realize that you need to take out-of-town clients to dinner. You don’t have a reservation, and you can’t call at this hour — no one will answer! You can leave a message, but then you might not discover until the afternoon that your restaurant of choice is completely booked. What to do?

There’s a solution that sounds new, but actually has been around since 1999. The difference is that it’s catching on like wildfire now. It’s called OpenTable.com, a Web site that allows you to discover immediately which restaurants are available at the right time, make a reservation online and get confirmation within seconds.

The service began in gourmet-conscious San Francisco, with a rapid migration to New York City. According to a recent New York Times article, it took three years for the online reservations company to seat its millionth customer. Now it reserves tables at restaurants for 2 million people each month.

Ann Shepherd, senior director of consumer marketing for OpenTable.com, said that 800 eateries are registered in New York, and customers can choose from 600 in San Francisco. Hawaii has 41 online (23 on Oahu), which is “double where were at this time last year,” said Shepherd.

http://starbulletin.com/2007/07/18/features/story01.html

Email Marketing – How to Build a Bigger Customer Database

Customers’ e-mail addresses are as good as gold in today’s digital marketing age, and fondue chain The Melting Pot has hit the jackpot. The Tampa, Fla.-based brand’s “Club Fondue” e-mail database boasts more than 500,000 names; since the program’s inception two years ago, both restaurant guest counts and sales have increased.

The secret to building such a rich marketing resource is in offering customers real value for signing up, says Kendra Sartor, vice president of brand development at The Melting Pot. Club Fondue members earn a free chocolate fondue dessert when they join and another annually on their birthdays. Additionally, they receive advance notice of special events and are allowed to make reservations before non-members for special occasions such as Valentine’s Day, when tables are a hot ticket.

Beyond boosting guest loyalty and repeat visits, having the comprehensive diner database creates an even greater opportunity for The Melting Pot: the chance to get direct feedback from its best customers and use their input to craft a better, more consumer-focused brand. That was the idea last May, when the chain launched what it hopes will become an annual e-mail survey to find out how customers use and perceive the restaurants. The project garnered an impressive 28% response rate–thanks to an offer for a free chocolate fondue–which was enough to drive some key changes in the company’s business strategy.

“It really helped us define what the guest wants. We don’t own this brand; our customers own this brand,” Sartor says. “If my marketing strategy is about what the CEO or the president or I want, we’re doomed. It has to be about responding to the guest.”

See http://www.rimag.com/web-exclusives/articles/melting-pot-database.asp

Restaurants rely on Web sites

By Greg Stiles

Mail Tribune

There is little doubt in Susan Chester’s mind that a Web site and restaurant go together like a good dressing on a green salad.

“I think it is apparent having a Web site allows an establishment to create and develop a personality as well as communicate its purpose and message to its patrons,” said Chester, proprietor of the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant in Ashland. “Web sites that inform and engage the customer are an important part of the success of an establishment.”

According to the survey, e-mail also rated highly for restaurant marketing, with 68 percent of respondents saying they used it as a main way to reach new customers. Nearly three in 10 establishments said they conducted monthly targeted campaigns.

Yondorf said Porters began distributing an e-newsletter last summer.

He said it’s hard to gauge the response, but the list presently numbers about 2,000 and is growing thanks to comment cards and people inquiring on the Web page. That puts Porters in the mainstream with about seven in 10 restaurants collecting e-mail addresses when visitors sign up online. Nationally, 61 percent of the e-mail addresses restaurants gather are from guest visits and 18 percent come from business card promotions

See http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070607/BIZ/706070329

       Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or at business@mailtribune.com

Components of a Feedback Management System

Recently, the “light” has turned on for many companies to see the value of providing a feedback management system that allows their customers to participate in a two-way communication channel.  If this is a recent undertaking for you, let me suggest 4 essential components of a successful feedback management system.

#1  Accessibility.  Access to your feedback system must be easy and freely given.  If your feedback system is too hard to access or too difficult to find you will not get the kind of feedback you are looking for.  Customers will give up pretty quickly if they find access to your system difficult.  It is best to have multiple ways that your customers can access your feedback system.  It could be through your website, a customer portal, a software application or an online survey.

Read The Rest Here http://blog.ideascope.com/public/item/167262

Small Businesses Getting Social

Participate in online social networks - A restaurant two or three towns away sent me a friend request from their MySpace page. I hadn’t been there before, but what I found on their page was friendly and informative. It provided a nice glimpse of their restaurant as well as a schedule of upcoming events, and a history of past parties and promotions. I haven’t visited in person yet, but these really are people that I want to be friends with.

http://searchengineland.com/070412-020930.php