Isn’t it the pits when you get to your favorite restaurant at 8:00 on a Friday night, ready for your favorite meal, with your favorite friends and realize that everyone else in town has the exact same idea? Only they’ve gotten there before you. As you make your way through the crowd toward the host with the waitlist in hand, you try to mentally calculate the wait time based on the amount of people you see and the approximate number of tables in the room and scour the bar area for any available seats at the same time. It doesn’t work so defeated, you simply put your name on the list and commence standing around. Or you leave, because your stomach tells you to, only to settle for second best.

Until now, this very scenario, which is so often the case with popular restaurants, has both denied clientele their favorite food and cost restaurateurs business. Thanks to the development of an app called No Wait, the waiting may soon be over, or at least a lot less painful.

No Wait, which is available for download now, is perfect for restaurants that do not accept reservations. It is an app formatted to work with Mac products and can help eliminate front of house crowds and cranky customers by allowing restaurant staff to text message guests when their table is ready and to easily organize walk-in and call-ahead parties. And the app allows for use of multiple devices simultaneously. No Wait also automatically starts a mobile dialogue with customers and thanks them after their dining experience. This is not only a nice, personal touch on the part of restaurant, but it also is a way for that restaurant to build a text marketing list. No Wait offers 4 different versions of the app starting with a free version that allows up to 200 customers. Next is the slightly more robust fifty-nine dollar version that allows 500 customers per month, followed by the standard package that jumps significantly to 1200 customers and costs one hundred and fourteen dollars a month. If you find your business expanding at a rapid pace and you need even more of a bump up in features and services, the premium plan allows for 2500 customers and costs one hundred and ninety-nine dollars a month. Some of the features that come with the basic, standard and premium plans and that are not included in the free plan are the ability to customize messages and accounts and send text campaigns out to lists.

No Wait is a time and energy saver that restaurants in Los Angeles, New York and other big cities with large populations of people who dine out on a regular basis will benefit greatly from an app like this one. By using No Wait restaurants can offer a way to make waiting for a table a much more enjoyable experience by providing real-time information and updates. This means that even if there is a wait at a restaurant, a customer can wander off, do a little shopping or even get a drink somewhere else without feeling panicked about possibly missing hearing their name called.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this guest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

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