Yelp hasn’t offered an official launch date for its new feature, but expect to be remotely waiting for a table at your favorite dining spot in the next couple of months. By using the Nowait guest app, users can see how long they would have to wait at a restaurant that does not accept reservations, as well as put their names on the waitlist without being physically present at a restaurant. Nowait is now available in all 50 states and 4,000 restaurants, and is used by both national chains and small businesses.
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The only thing more annoying than busy restaurants that won’t take reservations are busy restaurants that won’t take reservations and won’t tell you over the phone whether or not there now is a long wait for a table. The setup will likely be similar to Nowait’s current system: Users add their name and party size to the wait list from their phone, then get notified by text when their table is ready. Customers can also text back to say they’re running late, and restaurants can decide whether or not to hold the table for them.
Yelp will invest $8 million as part of the agreement in order to make this technological concept more widely available.
This partnership has multiple benefits. I lived in Pittsburgh for a year and a half, and the majority of restaurants and residents are huge Nowait fans.
Even better? Yelp recently announced that it’s partnered with Nowait, and will allow Yelp users to join a Nowait queue directly from the Yelp platform. It helps us by enabling us to drive more traffic to our restaurants and it allows us to bring the Nowait experience to as many consumers as possible. “We are going to expand our restaurant and customer base”.
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While Nowait considers itself a tech firm first and foremost, Sykes says Nowait is still in the hospitality business – which means that the company has one very unique requirement of its new employees: they all have to work as a host at a restaurant for at least two nights. Let us know in the comment section below!
