This month, we wanted to highlight some NetWaiter tools available to restaurant owners. 

NetWaiter Social Widget – About a year ago, we unveiled the NetWaiter social widget.  If enabled, this field appears on the front page of a NetWaiter site, allowing restaurants to post announcements, updates, or promotions.  You can advertise the soup-of-the-day, a special on a popular appetizer, or some other message that lets your customers know what’s going on at your restaurant.  Customers can also use it to interact with your restaurant, leave comments, or giving a ‘thumbs-up’ to one of your posts.  Of course, as owner, you have control over what messages are displayed and can edit posts in the NetWaiter Management Console.

Hide / Show Functionality - Many restaurants have special dishes or items with limited quantities.  “Homemade Lasagna” is a good example.  If your restaurant were to run out of Lasagna, or any other dish, you can simply ‘Hide’ the item in your Management Console to temporarily make it disappear from your online menu.  When it becomes available again, simply ‘Show’ the item.  This prevents the need to delete and re-add items, and also keeps hidden items in the same position on your menu.

Variable Prep Times – NetWaiter just released a new feature that allows restaurants the ability to configure Prep Times based on the time and day of the week.  The normal "Default Prep Time" allows restaurants to indicate when an order could be made immediately available (i.e. 15 mins).  During rush periods, however, it may take longer for meals to be prepared.  This feature lets restaurants configure different Prep Times based on the day and time.  Is Friday at 6:00pm busy for your restaurant?  Solution: set your Prep Time to 25 minutes, rather than your normal 15 minutes.

Restaurants across the country offering online ordering through NetWaiter can now offer the same service to diners using their Internet-enabled Smartphones.  The service, launched in early November, automatically became available to restaurants using NetWaiter, and their customers.

Mobile Ordering.pdf (132.37 kb)

It's no surprise that major restaurant chains in the U.S. were lobbying the NFL and the NFL Players Association to end the lockout that threatened the football season this fall and winter.  Restaurants popular with the football clientele were anticipating same month sales to be off a minimum of 10% to 15%. Some were predicting as high as 40%. 

But with the season starting this month, it's time for restaurants to gear up to attract the football crowd, and remind customers that ordering online through NetWaiter means a minimum of time away from their big screen television.

You can do this a number of ways:

1. Work with your employees and start a narrative with customers.  Football fans love to talk about game day plans.  Make sure they get the message from the wait staff that NetWaiter can make their pickup or delivery that much easier.
2. Brag about your online ordering site in signage and other point-of-purchase opportunities – table tents, signage at the cash register, your website, and even in the restrooms.  Make sure that everywhere your customers are, they know about your online ordering site.
3. Promote online ordering specials.  What are the offerings you have that are especially suited for football viewing?  Hot chicken wings, stuffed potato peels and pizza are all popular this time of year.  Can you offer a complimentary appetizer with each order of $40 or more?  Get creative!
4. Update your advertising.  Do you run regular ads?  Do you have a billboard around the corner?  How about radio spots during football programing or sports shows?  Make sure all these messages include online ordering for the football season.

Football season is a great business opportunity for many restaurants, and also a time to increase customer awareness about online ordering.  Long after the season is over, customers will still be bringing in extra sales with the click of their mouse and your NetWaiter site.