NetWaiter recently released several new features for its restaurant online ordering service, aimed at giving customers more convenience and choices, building loyalty, and making your restaurant marketing efforts more refined and targeted.  Here’s a summary of the features:

Birthday Promo System – Configure a Birthday Promo for customers and NetWaiter will automatically trigger the promotion, emailing it to each customer before their birthday.  The promo can be valid for a pre-determined amount of time after a customer’s birthday.  The Birthday Promo System allows you to recognize your best customers with a ‘Happy Birthday’ wish and continue to build their loyalty.  The best thing about the system – your restaurant can “set it and forget it.”  NetWaiter manages the promotions and redemptions automatically.

Dine-In Option – Rather than offering only Takeout and Delivery options, you can now provide customers the option to place Dine-In orders.  This is ideal for the customer that wants to order in advance, but eat at your restaurant (and it saves you money on takeout packaging).

Delivery Driver Alerts – Send incoming delivery orders straight to your delivery driver/company.  If you want to notify a third-party delivery company of a new order, you can send them the order information, in full, including when the order will be ready at your restaurant and when the order is scheduled for delivery to your customer.

Enhanced Reporting Section – The new Menu Stats page is located in the Reports section of the NetWaiter Management Console.  The Menu Stats page allows you to sort through the most popular categories and items during a particular date range, using an assortment of variables, including: Pickup vs. Delivery vs. Dine-in, day of the week, and the time of day.

End-Of-Day Reports – The new End-Of-Day reporting feature allows managers to see an order summary and a list of all orders that were sent throughout the day.  The order summary includes information such as: Pickup vs. Delivery vs. Dine-in, mobile vs. non-mobile, and paid online vs. paid-in-person.

Without a doubt, you have probably noticed a new phenomenon in print – those funky squares that look like scrambled crossword puzzles. They are QR Codes (Quick Response Codes).

QR codes are popular with today's mobile culture. They read like bar codes when scanned and return information to the user based on how the QR code is setup. Their use in the U.S. catapulted 1,200% during the last six months of 2010. In Japan, where QR codes were developed, it is estimated that 86% of consumers scan at least four QR codes a month.

The best reason to embrace mobile technology, such as QR codes, is to make it more convenient for customers to do business with you. Many restaurant customers have Smartphones. You probably see them "checking-in" to your restaurant using location-based services such as Foursquare or Facebook. As customers continue to embrace Smartphones, mobile marketing will become increasingly important.

To help restaurants promote their mobile site, NetWaiter has configured a unique QR code for every restaurant on the NetWaiter Network. They can be easily accessed from a restaurant’s NetWaiter Management Console. When customers scan a restaurant’s QR code, they are immediately directed to their mobile NetWaiter site and menu.

TIP: Print some NetWaiter QR codes and post them around your restaurant to promote your mobile site and menu to customers. If your restaurant does not have a NetWaiter account, you can activate your account today, at NO CHARGE, and get immediate access to your restaurant's NetWaiter site and unique QR code.