restaurant site

[cokeclassact]

what would be the logistics of starting a site that displays restaurant wait times in your local area? there are currently sites through which u can make dinner reservations...however in my experience most people make reservations only for special occasions. i think that for the average person going out to dinner it would be preferable to instead check a website before leaving the house...or check the cell phone on the way there...to see which restaurant they would want to go to. if anyone thinks this is feasible and wants to help me work on it please feel free to pm me.

[Karen]

Is that really feasible? You would need a minute by minute data feed for each restuarant. Not to mention, someone could check the site and see there is only a 10 minute wait at their choice of restaurant. But on the drive over the wait may turn into 45 minutes if more people arrive.

Karen

[cokeclassact]

would it work with a less than minute-by-minute feed? what if it was updated only every half hour? also perhaps if someone upon seeing that there was a 10 minute wait could then make a temporary reservation by hitting a button and locking themselves into the seating order much like they do in person when they find there is a wait? still not sure of the feasibility...but i might as well try to make an argument. let me know your thoughts.

[Karen]

If the site promotes a 10 minute wait at a given restuarant (for example) and the person arrives to find that the wait is 20 minutes, then the site won't be seen as reliable.

Karen

[noname]

I'm pretty sure that this is being done/researched at the moment. I saw it as an ad in Wired magazine, if i remember rightly.

[MsNadi]

The most feasible way I could think of to do this would be to write an open source script or software add-on that feeds you the restaurant's reservations schedule and waitlist and then on YOUR END (your web site) does a few algorithms, based on the reservations schedule to compute the average wait times.

I'd go the software root only because that would prevent the hosts/hostesses from having to do anything ADDITIONAL on their end to contribute to your site.

Caveat: I don't know if you've ever worked in a restaurant, but only most HIGH END restaurants do wait times via the computer. Everybody else has a paper and pencil wait list that they "eyeball" wait times based on.

You could contact some of he better known restaurant chains, find out reservations software they use and then go from there - considering most of these chains are consolidated and owned by the same few companies, the number of different software applications should be three at best (i.e. - think the company that owns PF CHangs, the company that owns Cheesecake Factory, the company that owns things like Joe's Crab Shack, Red Lobster, maybe Red Robin/Chili's/TGIFridays etc - all chain restauraunts).

[cokeclassact]

is this being done? is that a definite? msnadi you sound like u have a pretty good idea of what would be involved do u want to give it a shot?

[DaveAPN]

What would be the restaurant's incentive to provide a waiting timeframe? What restaurant wants to turn away business before the customer even arrives (and has that momentary 'do I wait?' consideration)

I think the only way this sort of model could work would be a viral text messaging application by restaurant-goers themselves. People show up at a restaurant, get told the wait will be 30 minutes, and then text that info to some sort of database which then updates the website.

The marketing and technology hurdles, as well as challenge of acheiving critical mass (enough people use it which makes it useful) seem daunting at best.

Best,

[robyang!]

You should make it wiki, that is restaurants volunteer.

[cokeclassact]

not sure how the restaurants would view it. it could be seen as negative, or it could be recognized that by advertising a low wait or no wait time they would receive business when they need it most. during the times when they have a high wait time they would not need the business as much, which would possibly drive away customers. however, because the restaurant business is consolidated (the same group (darden) owns red lobster, olive garden, and another restaurant as well i believe for instance) customers that were driven away could end up at another restaurant owned by the group. (if red lobster had a high wait time and olive garden had a low one, some customers could be funneled from red lobster to olive garden.) of course there is also the chance that customers would go to another restaurant not owned by the company. maybe the restaurants would only agree to it if they could sign an exclusive deal? i dont know...again just tossing the idea up and seeing where it lands.