Archives for October 2019

Run Like Magic: New Turn & Flow Controls Are the Best Way to Maximize Table Availability

At OpenTable, we’ve always prided ourselves on leading the industry when it comes to table management. Longtime restaurant partners know we changed the game when we introduced Flex in 2010, helping operators book their dining rooms solid. Since launching GuestCenter, we’ve added new features along the way to help restaurants streamline their service, like the ability to view and adjust your availability easily, maximizing each shift.

Now, we’ve entered a new era of dining room mastery. With new, flexible control features in GuestCenter, you’ve got the tools you need to control your turns, optimize seating, and create and automate your ideal flow – so your restaurant can run like the inside of your brain, with or without you there.

“We’ve really enjoyed testing and experimenting with OpenTable’s new controls,” said Jonás J. Millán, Restaurateur and Owner of the Juvia Group. “The turn controls keeps moving, adjusting and adapting to how reservations come in. The feature gives you the power to control and increase your capacity in a controlled environment without jeopardizing the flow of the dining room.”

Most restaurants want to maximize bookings by offering more availability all of the time – that’s why Flex inventory is so successful. But constant availability isn’t the best fit for every operation. Some restaurants need to control the flow of tables according to their service style, or a specific experience they want to give guests. Other restaurants have such high demand that they can restrict booking times to only periods that maximize turns – and have no trouble selling out.

The amount of time that a restaurant expects a table to be occupied can vary from 45 minutes to four hours, making it difficult for floor managers to optimize their seating. With these new controls, you can maximize your seatings, control the flow of your dining room, and adapt to the unpredictable, real world of running your house. Assistive prompts help you manage your staff so the house runs exactly the way you want it to. Here are all the ways our new features put you in control to maximize, customize, and pace the flow of your restaurant.

“Controlling the pace of the dining room – determining how often tables turn over and how to fill those tables quickly – has significant financial impact for our restaurant partners,” said Jon Morin, OpenTable’s VP of Product Management. “We’ve designed two new turn and flow control features that react to incoming reservations in real time and adapt to hit operating goals within our GuestCenter platform. In fact, we’ve seen that over 70% of the top cover driving restaurants use these types of controls to run and grow their business.”

Pack the House

Busy restaurants need smarter and more flexible control over their books. Turn controls are the best way to pack your house, drive up revenue, and never waste a turn. You can define a minimum number of times a table will turn over by party size or table, and our system will work in the background by only offering bookings that help you achieve your goals. Turn controls are:

Dynamic. For one shift or every shift, you can set the minimum number of turns you want to achieve, by party or table size.

Automated. You can set your controls to expire 12, 24, or 48 hours before the start of the shift. Availability updates automatically as reservations are booked (or in cases where you break your own rules.)

“It worked for us,” says Jonás of the new features. “I could see how tables were flowing, and if there were empty spaces – and I said, man, if I could do this over the weekdays and get more covers, let’s give it a try.”

Learn how to set up turn controls here.

Go With the Flow

Every restaurateur wants a dining room full of tables, but you don’t want them all seated at the same time. Flow controls allow you to keep hospitality on lock, run a butter-smooth service, and keep your team and guests happy. You can control the pace and flow of your shift according to your service style and staffing levels, and always keep your staff out of the weeds. This frees up time to focus on your guests, while the features make sure your book stays on track. Flow controls are:

Customizable. Since no two services are alike, you can approach the flow of service differently – by the day of the week, or the time of day. Control the number of covers and parties that can be booked in 15-minute increments, and adjust cover and party pacing by time period.

Specific. Manage the party size mix of your reservations and set a cap to the number of covers that can book at any given time.

“It helps us increase our capacity in a controlled way,” Jonás says. “That weekend we did 30 or 40 covers per night [above our average], which is a lot more. But the biggest thing – the flow of the covers that came was very good.”

Learn how to manage flow controls here.

What to Know About Running Paid Marketing

When it comes to marketing, most restaurants have similar goals: to build their brands, fill their seats, and stay top of mind. How they achieve those goals is an entirely different matter – and doing so requires a clear understanding of the return on their investment.

We get it: most of you didn’t get into the restaurant business because you love marketing. But the truth is that in this competitive industry, even the most successful restaurants need to invest in marketing. Likely, you’re using some combination of social media, PR, email, and paid advertising to reach potential guests. But how do you really know what’s working?

Below, we share an overview of the top paid marketing channels for restaurants, including what they do, who they speak to, what you’re actually paying for, and how to think about results. Plus, we share how through OpenTable, you can track your paid digital marketing spend back to diners who actually dine in your restaurants to understand the true ROI.

Facebook & Instagram

What They Say: Two billion people use Facebook every month to connect with friends and family and to discover things that matter. Find new customers and build lasting relationships with them.

How It Works: With about two billion monthly users, Facebook and Instagram are all about reach and brand awareness. That means you’re paying for eyeballs – the opportunity to get your restaurant in front of the immense number of people who use the platforms.

Using the Ad Manager, you select a goal, audience, budget, and schedule, then create an ad with image and copy. Facebook provides metrics to measure campaign results, including reach (the number of people who saw the ad at least once), impressions, number of clicks on that link, and more. You can see the cost per landing page views and, of course, your total amount spent.

What You Need to Know

Expertise and resources help. Advertising on Facebook and Instagram takes time, and requires research and strategic direction. Yes, the Ad Manager will make suggestions for copy and placement, but those recommendations aren’t always the most effective – so it’s up to you to get it right.

It’s competitive. The ever-increasing number of businesses using Facebook and Instagram ads means that getting an ad noticed is harder than ever. You may want to consider creative ad sets, which can come at additional cost.

Users aren’t always looking to book. Facebook and Instagram have a massive scale, but diners don’t go there specifically to discover new restaurants or make a reservation.

You’re paying for views and clicks. Facebook and Instagram charge for ad views and clicks, and ROI tracking (to see how many diners the ad drives) is limited. For each ad, we recommend you ask yourself: was your ad necessary to drive reservations, or were those diners going to book anyway?

Google

What They Say: Get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. Only pay for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.

How It Works: Google sees 3 billion searches per day, so the platform is all about reaching people with intent to book. You don’t have to spend money to be found on Google. Learn how to optimize your organic SEO with these tips. If you do decide to invest in advertising, unlike Facebook and Instagram, the goal here is to generate leads, so you pay when diners find you through Google.

Much like with Facebook and Instagram, when you launch a Google ad you will pick a goal and location, define your product and service using keywords, and finally create your ad and set your budget. Google’s Ad Manager shows metrics like clicks through to your website, impressions, and cost per click, including your total spend.

What You Need to Know

Again, you need some expertise. You can set up Google ads yourself, but knowing the basics will only get your so far. Running effective campaigns requires monitoring closely and tweaking to optimize results.

Be smart about keywords. Picking the right keywords to start with Google ads is crucial – just as important as the monitoring and tweaking you do along the way. Research keywords or talk to an expert before you get started.

It’s not about pictures. Google ads are text-only, which means you won’t be able to draw people in with your best food photos. Instead, focus attention on the messaging in your copy.

Keep an eye on your spending. Businesses of all sizes (and budgets) are vying for attention via Google ads. When businesses target the same keywords, you may end up paying more to advertise, so it’s easy to spend more than you planned. Constant monitoring is key.

You’re paying for clicks. Google Ads is a pay-per-click service – that means you may spend a significant amount of money and see little to no ROI. Don’t forget, you ultimately want diners to book a reservation, not just land on your website. [Read more…]

This Week in Restaurant News: New Young Guns, Accessible Childcare, Secrets of a Michelin Inspector

Every week we’re rounding up some of our favorite articles with trends and tidbits from the world of restaurants. Tell us: what made your reading list this week?

Eater’s Looking for the Best Young Restaurant Talent. Will You Help Us Find Them? – Eater

Meet the Restaurateur Championing Accessible Childcare for New York City’s Hospitality Workers – Vogue

Ever Heard of a Communal Restaurant? Here’s How Four Baltimoreans Make It Work – Bon Appétit

In Male-Dominated Pizza Circles, Women Are Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie – NPR

The Secret Life of an Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector – Forbes

The Bo Ssäm Decade – TASTE

Online Ordering Boom Gives Rise to Virtual Restaurants – Associated Press

An Unintended Consequence of Meatless Burger Boom: Vegans Lives Got Easier – CNBC

James Beard Foundation’s Mitchell Davis Talks Groundbreaking Chefs, Global Food Culture & ‘Signature Dishes’

This week, in celebration of the new Phaidon book Signature Dishes That Matter, OpenTable and Phaidon kicked off a series of special dining events at top restaurants across the U.S. The Signature Dishes Dinner Series features restaurant dishes that have defined the course of culinary history, including Nina Compton’s celebrated Curried Baby Goat, plus historic classics like Carpaccio (invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice, 1950) and Baked Alaska (from New York’s Delmonico’s, in 1867). To mark the occasion, we’re sharing a Q&A with the James Beard Foundation’s Mitchell Davis, who authored the book’s introduction.

Few of us have ordered, eaten, digested and considered quite so many signature dishes as Mitchell Davis. Davis is Chief Strategy Officer of the James Beard Foundation, a cookbook author, a journalist, and a scholar with a Ph.D. in Food Studies from NYU. In 2013, Davis led the team that was selected by the U.S. Department of State to create the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015. He also holds a chair on the Academy of the London-based World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

For Phaidon’s new book, Signature Dishes That Matter, Davis has contributed an introduction that considers the place of these noteworthy menu inclusions within global restaurant culture. Here he discusses the dishes’ rise, how they have epitomized different eras, how they’ve been affected by Instagram, and how sometimes, they’re not actually the best thing to order.

In the book, you quote Paul Bocuse as telling you that the rise of the patron chef promoted the notion of signature dishes.

Yes. Suddenly the chef was cooking for his or herself and to sustain their business. In a marketplace, you have to stand out, and that’s where the signature dish comes in. Sometimes, in places such as Italy, where the food culture is less about innovation and more about interpretation, standing out is more about playing someone else’s symphony rather than creating your own. In America it’s very different; the individual act of creativity is valued over everything else. And sometimes the paucity of the local cuisine helps a creative patron chef. Could René Redzepi have emerged with a whole new vision of what Danish food could be, if people had loved Danish food for what it used to be? I don’t think so.

Which inclusion in the book captures a certain era best?

Auguste Escoffier and his Peach Melba recall a deferential age, when things were named for great people. I also think there Korean tacos capture today’s food-truck culture of LA. Anything that changes as quickly as food becomes representative of its moment.

Can an OK chef make a great signature dish?

Perhaps, but the opposite tends to happen: a chef gets known for a signature dish, but has much better dishes on the menu.

Are there famous chefs that reject the notion of being defined by a signature dish?

Any place that has a constantly changing menu decides not to be bound by it. Alice Waters at Chez Panisse had a different menu every night based on the market that day. But she’s known as the person who served peaches for dessert. I don’t know how many peaches she served but she became associated with it. Suddenly you go on TV, radio or YouTube and there’s something you have become associated with. It doesn’t matter what you think. You don’t get to control the narrative!

Do chefs move on from their signature dish and refuse to cook it any more?

For sure. Look at René Redzepi; he closed his restaurant Noma and changed it completely, back when it was regarded as the most important place in the world. You’re saying something if you decide not serve something.

If you had to pick a traditional dish or street food that an enterprising chef might work into their signature dish, what might it be?

I knew you were going to ask that! I’m trying to remember what I’ve seen lately. OK: pasta, despite the rise of gluten intolerance. Lots of new restaurants in the US are focusing on it. There’s still no end in sight to the rise of Korean food and ingredients on menus. Kimchi is almost universal. And tallow. The rise of whole animal butchery and local butcher shops has led to a rise in excess beef fat that clearly someone is rendering into tallow in which chefs are frying just about everything. I’ve had tallow-fried foods in Detroit, in NY, in Los Angeles. It’s a real thing.

How have menu descriptions changed the way we view signature dishes?

Well, menu writing is an art. It’s also very susceptible to the time. Nowadays we describe everything. I remember when Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened a restaurant in New York 20 years ago called JoJo; the menu just said things like “fish,” “eggs” and “chicken.” It was meant to counteract the more verbose trend in menu writing. What amazes me is when someone reads the menu and says “Oh my god this is all so delicious.” I’m like, how do you know? You haven’t tasted anything; you’ve just heard it described by a gifted writer.

So what are the word trends on menus right now?

Everything is fermented, and the menu now lists the way things are produced – line caught, day harvested, etc. We’re now listing the processes of production. I think we’re also seeing backlash against local and seasonal, which is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of restaurant dining, which used to be about exotic and foreign not local. Once upon a time most people ate local and went to a restaurant for something else.

Does it work when another chef cooks someone else’s signature dish? For example Corey Lee at SFMoMA?

I think that’s a really interesting conceit for a restaurant menu. I like it conceptually, but I’m not sure that it leads to the best dinner, although we had a nice meal there. It’s a commentary on being in a museum, which is basically about greatest hits.

Have you ever eaten an underwhelming signature dish?

From the book, I have to say, that I didn’t believe Alain Passard’s Confit Tomato with Twelve Flavors was worth the effort. It was an impressive transformation of tomato into a dessert, but I think the essence of the tomato was lost and for so much effort. And I mentioned how I admire the success of Dominique Ansel’s Cronut™, but it’s not my favorite dessert of his. I think individually, croissants and donuts are better eaten separately than they are combined.

How has Instagram affected your dining experience?

I think it’s definitely part of the current moment in gastronomy. It can make food look beautiful, but if it doesn’t taste good, who cares? I think some of the stuff that René Redzepi is doing right now – obviously he’s only interested in the taste – but it’s so Instagrammable he’s got to be thinking about it.

I recently had an Italian dish with a sauce cooked from ground chicken livers and onions. It was totally delicious, but you could never take a good picture of it. We called it pre-Instagram food. Thankfully, Instagram doesn’t make all that delicious, yet unattractive food go away.

For more from Mitchell Davis and the dishes he mentions get a copy of Signature Dishes That Matter, a global celebration of the iconic restaurant dishes that defined the course of culinary history over the past 300 years. Curated by experts and organized chronologically, it’s both a landmark cookbook and a fascinating cultural history of dining out.

By Mat Smith, Digital Editorial Director, Phaidon

Road to Extraordinary: Mark Read of Firmdale Hotels

Follow Mei Li on Instagram @mei_li_the_crestie.

So, what does my Chinese Crested rescue Mei Li have to do with this series? No, it’s not the fact that Chinese Cresteds are hairless or the breed most often voted the ugliest dog in the world. Rather, Mei Li was the genesis for one of the most imaginative and personalized gestures of hospitality that I’ve ever experienced.

Last summer, my wife Stephanie and I vacationed in London and stayed at our absolute favorite hotel in the world – Ham Yard Hotel – which is part of Firmdale Hotels (and a Venga client). Founded by the husband-and-wife dynamic duo Tim and Kit Kemp, Firmdale is a collection of 10 luxury boutique properties in London and NYC. Firmdale is the only hotel group to be recognized four times with the Queen’s Award for outstanding achievements in International Trade, which is the UK’s most prestigious accolade for business.

When we checked in, there was a handwritten note with a mysterious request: Please be in the lobby tomorrow at 2 p.m. We went to the concierge to inquire further but were met with blank stares and shoulder shrugs. Stephanie and I love adventures and the unknown so we were totally up for whatever came our way.

At the appointed time, an employee escorted us down a flight of stairs and opened the door to reveal a completely empty 47-seat movie theater. Two of the plush seats had popcorn and glasses of champagne waiting for us. As the lights dimmed, we settled in to watch something, but what, we still had no clue.

Not until the opening credits started to roll did we realize it was one of Stephanie’s favorite movies, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. For those of you not familiar, a Chinese Crested dog plays a small but fun role in this rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. Ever since seeing the movie in college, Stephanie wanted to rescue one.

As remarkable as the experience was, equally remarkable was the mastermind. It wasn’t the concierge or the GM, it was Firmdale’s Director of IT, Mark Read. Anyone in Mark’s orbit will tell you he exudes hospitality, takes measured risks, and prides himself on being an early adopter of new technologies. After all, he reached out to Venga back in 2014 when we had barely emerged from the early stages of our product and became one of our first clients.

Like our beloved Chinese Crested, Mark is distinctive. I know you’ll enjoy our conversation and see why I think he’s a breed apart.

Living the Hospitality Technology Evolution

Winston: I know you are in IT, but I’ve heard you say you think of yourself as a hotelier first. How did you get started and come to love hospitality?

Mark: My story starts when I was 15 at school, and I broke both my wrists on a trampoline. In those days you weren’t allowed to go back and retake your exams, so I walked out having taken only one, which was basically oral English because I couldn’t write for anything else. I took my learnings from that class, including the idea that if I could articulate myself, and if I was able to talk with people, there would be a world of opportunity out there for me.

I started working in hotels and got my first job as a trainee luggage hall porter. I saw again how valuable my interpersonal skills were – the more I related to people, the more I actually earned, because if they liked me, I got tipped better. And that was the start – I discovered how much I really enjoyed working with people!

Over time, a lot of work started to move on to computers, so I started by joining a switchboard team where I learned how to program a telephone switchboard system. At one point I was running a team of 20 people focused on switchboard of a large hotel when an IT Director left, so I got offered the role. They actually combined IT with my switchboard responsibilities to save the hotel money in a time of recession, and I was able to see the similarities between the two areas from a programming perspective. After really getting into it, I realized how interesting IT is!

But it really does go back to the people for me. There’s a lot of loyalty in my team. I myself have been with Firmdale for 19 years. My head of IT has been with me for 18 years. The next longest tenure is 17 years. That’s the sort of pattern with my team because they’re always learning something and we think totally differently to most other people, which is great.

Winston: You’ve been front and center for some serious technology evolutions – from switchboards to today. What are some of the key changes you’ve seen over the last 20 years?

Mark: When I was working in a small, privately-owned, 35-bedroom hotel as a switchboard operator, marketing people would come up to me and say, “Would you mind just filling in these cards?” Which was a record of people’s stay. So I would write in, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith have stayed on this day,” and their card would fill up with their stays. Somebody from marketing occasionally would pop up and flip through the files and have a quick look at who was there. Even then I could see how important it was to understand our customers. Now we have CRM systems like Venga that are designed to automatically keep track of those of stays, needs, and preferences.

Winston: As a trailblazer, you’re always thinking five steps, six steps ahead of most people I work with, which is so exciting to see – and you take risks. So have there been risks that failed?

Mark:I suppose my frustration now as a veteran of IT is the huge amount of information I have access to and determining how to deliver that information to team members.

I think my risk mitigation is: you never bet the whole farm. You never bet the whole business on it and you don’t compromise the security around your business. If you listen to your customers, you’ll hear some of what you could do or is missing for the business to enhance service. It’s then trying to find the vendors to deliver what you’re looking for.

Winston: How important is it that you cultivate relationships with those suppliers and vendors?

Mark: I am always looking for vendors and suppliers with a “yes” attitude. We actually recently changed vendors in one area because it’s just much better service and they are really responsive. I’m always looking to develop that two-way street.

Whenever I first meet a new vendor, I’ll actually test them a little bit before they get to meet with me. I’ll ask them to meet at one of our hotels and I’m purposely 5 minutes late or so to leave them in the lobby, where they can see and hear everything that is happening around them. When I do actually meet with them, if they can’t relate something they saw or they overheard that was interesting, then it’s likely a no from us because there’s no attention to detail about what’s happening around you. You don’t want to be stuck looking at your phone! Take in the ambience, look around you, and think about how you synergize with our business and what you could possibly do, and then talk about it.

Winston: What’s on the horizon for technology innovation? What are you trying out in a small way? What’s going to be here in three years?

Mark: It’s really difficult to say because technology is moving at a much faster pace. All the buzzwords have been there forever: big data, AI. This stuff goes back to the 1960s and just gets re-brought-up in a new vein. So I’m looking forward to using some of those technologies practically, things like AI in the business to eliminate repetitive tasks that add little value. [Read more…]

Archives for October 2019