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Hostess Seating and Reservations

The History Of Hostess Seating and Reservations

Restaurants have used everything from grease pencils to crayons, chalk, pencils, magnets and other creative and inventive means to track tables and customers waiting on tables.

In recent years restaurants have tried software programs designed to display the restaurant layout with tables taking on different shapes, colors and flashing to show their status.

Reservation lists have taken on various forms as well. With the advent of pagers, some restaurants allow their customers more freedom to wander away from the main hostess station and enjoy drinks at the bar, patio or even by the pool while waiting on a table to become available.

Some of the more elaborate systems will calculate wait times based upon table turns. Table turns are increased through the display of the table status at the hostess station. Reservations are easier tracked and seated through this seamless integration of these 2 separate but related functions.

Traditionally, it has been difficult if not impossible to find a reservation package that interfaced with a hostess seating (table layout) package which then integrated with the point of sale system that then feed table status information back to the hostess seating package.

The Need To Manage Hostess Seating and Reservations

The need is for an integrated reservation, hostess seating and point of sale system. Three packages. One vendor. One solution.

DirecTouch Point of Sale brings you all three in a seamless, integrated suite of software.

The Solution For Managing Hostess Seating and Reservations

Reservations

Using any terminal in the system a reservation may be taken for any day in the future.

If no keyboard is present on the terminal, the software will display a keyboard on the screen. Once the reservation is taken it will display on the screen for the hostess to refer back to.

Reservations will display on the hostess screen 1 hour ahead of their stated arrival time. They will then be displayed along with other reservations and people in the waiting list.

Once ready to be seated, the hostess touches or clicks the person's name and then can seat the party at their table.

Hostess Seating

Touch the customer's name and the table layout screen pops up.

Select the table where the customer is to be seated and the system then notifies the server/waiter by changing the color of their table. The hostess notifies the server/waiter verbally that someone has been seated and the dining process begins.

The different stages of the meal are then tracked by the software and displayed for the hostess and management to see.

Seated is shown in Yellow
Ticket Opened is shown in Light Blue
Expired or slow service is shown in Red
Ticket Presented is shown in Purple

Once a party has been seated the system then recalculates the wait time for a table. This time is displayed for the hostess so they can accurately quote wait times for your guests.

Point of Sale

Some people have a reservations package.

Some people have a hostess seating package.

Very few people have reservations, hostess seating, table management and point of sale all in one. DirecTouch has all of these and they work together to give you total front end control of your restaurant.

The Benefit Of Managing Hostess Seating and Reservations To You

Each of these packages have their own set of benefits and reasons to have them in your restaurant. Together, they enhance each other and give you more control of your operation.

Better control of your advanced reservations.
Take reservations at any terminal for any future date.
Make a simple reservation or reserve a specific section or table.
The reservation pops up on the hostess screen 1 hour prior to the arrival time.
The hostess seating portion gives you better seating control of your entire operation.
Accurate wait times are quoted to your guests based upon the most recent pace of seating.
The status of all the tables are displayed.
Empty tables are not missed.
Tables about to be available are displayed so quests may be paged and ready to be seated.
Table turns are increased.

In a restaurant with a $20 average ticket, if you were able to seat just 2 more tables per night using our system that would equate to $1,200 per month in additional sales for the restaurant.