Creating and managing events at your F&B concept can offer an opportunity to boost your revenues, while catering to a larger group of guests. Specifically, guests who crave unique and memorable dining experiences.
Restaurant events can vary from seasonal events like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day menus, or corporate events. When people try your restaurant through business events and enjoy their experience, they’re likely to come back as diners.
But before you can create an event at your F&B concept, you may need to consider using restaurant event management software.
This type of software can help you manage various aspects of the F&B event, ensuring a memorable experience for your guests, and streamlined operations and maximum profits for your restaurant.
Read on to learn more about event management software for restaurants and how you can use it to create your next event.
What are the different types of software used in a restaurant?
To manage a successful restaurant, you need to have efficient software and processes in place. There are different types of restaurant management software for the different functions in your restaurant.
Here are a few examples of the top types of software you may use in your F&B concept:
POS system: A restaurant point-of-sale (POS) system helps you process and collect customer payments via credit or debit cards.
Restaurant marketing software: This can include marketing tools for restaurants like social media management, design software, as well as email and SMS marketing software.
Shift management: This can be an independent system in your restaurant management system to help you manage shifts based on peak seasons and times.
Payroll: This is HR software that helps you manage your staff, their leaves, absences, and salaries.
Restaurant CRM: A customer relationship management (CRM) system is where you create and store your guest book. This includes guest profiles, information about guests’ dining preferences, dietary restrictions, among others.
Reservation management software: This is software used to help restaurants collect online and offline bookings from guests. It also helps guests make reservations at restaurants, whether via their website or social media platforms. Sometimes referred to as a table and seating management system, some reservation management systems come with waitlist management features.
Event management software: This is a type of restaurant software for managing special events such as private parties, large groups, or corporate events.
What is restaurant event management software?
This is software that helps restaurant owners and reservation managers plan and manage events in a restaurant. This type of software may also be referred to as venue management software or restaurant event planning software.
Events can take the form of a corporate lunch or dinner, private party, or a special night like Latino nights or happy hour. Or it could be seasonal events like a Valentine’s Day dinner, Halloween event, among others.
Not all restaurants have or need to manage events. However, events tend to be characterized by limited-availability and spaces.
So, restaurant event management software helps staff collect reservations for a specific event, while taking into consideration
Timing
Number of people (per booking)
Which event guests have booked (if you have multiple events coming up)
Dishes ordered (if it’s a prix-fixe menu)
Guest preferences (dietary information, allergies,…etc.)
Seating preferences (outdoor, indoor, smoking or non-smoking areas)
Trying to manage all this using excel sheets, or worse hand-written notes, will only spell disaster in the short-term. You may end up with overbooking or under-booking. Either way you’re losing money or guests or both.
Using restaurant event management software makes managing all the above and other operations a breeze.
No headaches, no hassles. Just more time to give guests memorable dining experiences.
Who can use restaurant event planning software?
Any food and beverage concept can benefit from this type of software. However, the top types of venues that use this software include:
Single and multi-location restaurants
Bars
Wineries
Beaches with limited seating and beach clubs
F&B chains and groups
Cruise ships offering dining experience (for example, a 2-hour lunch)
Prix-fixe F&B concepts
Hotel restaurants
Pool-side restaurants
Other entertainment F&B locations
What does restaurant event management software do?
Restaurant event management systems act as reservation software. Here are some of the top features you’ll find in venue management systems for restaurants.
Managing events and reservations
As its name suggests, restaurant event management software helps you manage events at your F&B concept.
These events can vary from corporate or business dining events like a business luncheon or corporate iftar during Ramadan. Or they can be events similar to those held by hotel restaurants like Latino Night, Chinese Delights,…etc.
Events can also take the form of a private party like a large group celebrating a birthday or a private engagement dinner.
To book an event, restaurants need to coordinate seating to ensure a smooth flow throughout the event, while offering a great guest experience.
To manage and get bookings for an event, restaurants use reservation management software, like Servme. This helps them keep track of the number of people who made table bookings, collect in-advance payments (if applicable), among others.
Table and seating management
Besides managing reservations, a venue management system also helps you manage tables and seating. This is specifically helpful for merging or combining tables to seat large groups.
If you’re using Servme, you can add the number of guests you want to seat. Our software will show you the best tables or which tables to combine without hurting the flow in your restaurant.
Waitlist management
Many reservation and table management systems, like Servme, come with waitlist management features.
These include creating and managing online and offline waiting lists. If you have guests who cancelled last minute, you can easily tap into your waitlist and notify those guests that a table is now available for them.
Sell tickets using the reservation widget
If you manage F&B events, apart from private parties, you can use Servme’s reservation widget to collect online bookings and in-advance payments. These bookings can be in the form of online tickets to your special event.
As for payments, these can be reservation fees that you deduct when guests are paying their bill. Or they can be full prepayments for the whole meal.
Marketing automation
Some restaurant event management systems, like Servme, come with built-in marketing automation features. In Servme, you can create and manage email and SMS campaigns, or use WhatsApp Business for Restaurants.
Instead of having to sign up for multiple marketing platforms, you can have a several-in-one software. You can automate email and SMS marketing campaigns for your restaurant to boost sales, retention, and more.
Further reading: 10+ Restaurant Email Marketing Campaign Ideas for Better Sales & Retention
Automated guest surveys
One of the top features to look for in a restaurant event management system is automated guest surveys.
They are part of guest experience management and help you maintain the quality of your offerings, while ensuring guests are satisfied with your venues.
In addition, you can use guest surveys to explore new foods, create digital menus, uncover new locations if you plan to expand, among others.
Restaurant CRM
Your restaurant CRM isn’t just your guest book, although that’s a big part of it. You can create detailed guest profiles and update this information as guests make more bookings and add more notes.
For example, if your guest Sarah makes a booking for 4 people on Thursday night, she will add some details via your reservation widget. This information is automatically added to Sarah’s guest profile in your CRM. If she’s new, a profile is automatically created.
If Sarah makes another booking a month later and adds new information, her profile is updated with this information.
When Sarah arrives at your venue, your hosts will be able to see Sarah’s preferred seating area (indoor or outdoor) or even her preferred table. They’ll also see she prefers vegetarian food and likes to order coffee after her meal.
Hosts can provide a tailored and seamless experience each time Sarah books a table, generally or for a dining event.
For events management, your reservation and marketing managers can see who are the top guests who regularly attend your F&B events. Accordingly, they can tailor the next marketing campaign for these guests or send invites to special events for VIP guests.
Further reading: Discover How to Create Hyper-Personalization in Your Restaurant with Servme’s Auto-Tagging Feature
Restaurant integrations
It’s important to find venue management software that easily integrates with your F&B POS system and other integrations.
For example, Servme integrates with dozens of POS systems, Oracle’s property management system (PMS), and reservation or booking channels, such as Tripadvisor and Zomato.
In addition, F&B concepts using Servme can get online bookings from Facebook and Instagram, Reserve with Google, among others.
Further reading: Servme’s Guestbook V2 Is Live! Here’s What This Means
Reporting features
It’s no surprise that restaurant managers and owners need to keep an eye on numbers. But not all figures are important.
Top customer analytics for restaurants include revenue per available seat hour (RevPASH), average check per table, ratio of reservations, among others.
Further reading: WhatsApp Messaging Is Now Live on Servme!
Do more with Servme’s restaurant reservation & event management software
Besides the above perks of venue management software, using Servme means more features and more opportunities to improve guest experience and increase retention and repeat business.
Multiple restaurant management
Servme lets you manage multiple restaurants and events from your dashboard. You can review reporting features for each venue independently or compare venues.
This means ensuring your venues are all up to par and guests receive the same experience wherever they are. In addition, if one of your venues is fully-booked, you can notify interested guests of other nearby locations.
Create event-specific digital menus
Digital menus offer an opportunity to quickly create new menus and cut costs on constantly printing and updating print menus.
Creating seasonal menus and limited-time menus helps you create more events to increase your restaurant’s sales. Seasonal menus are also an opportunity to increase restaurant reservations.
Block tables for specific events
Using Servme, you can block tables for specific guests, like VIP or top-spenders. Or if you have a private event that will only take a portion of your restaurant, you can block those tables and keep the rest of the floor for walk-ins and online bookings.
Using Servme’s widget and table management system, guests can also book specific tables.
Automated seating management for large groups
If you’re using Servme, you can add the number of guests you want to seat. Our software will show you the best tables for this group or which tables to combine without hurting the flow in your restaurant.
Collect deposits, pre-payments
To make the most out of your dining events, you need to collect deposits or reservation fees or, more importantly, prepayments.
Prepayments are full in-advance payments usually for prix-fixe, or fixed-price menus. These menus usually include soup, an appetizer, the main course, dessert, and a beverage. They’re an opportunity to showcase your chef’s talents and the restaurant’s unique offerings.
Reduce no-shows
One of the top benefits of using Servme’s reservation and event management software is to reduce no-show guests. You can do so with automated email or SMS reminders, collecting reservation, cancellation, and no-show fees, among others.
Wrapping it up
Creating dining events can be a great way to market your restaurant.
Using restaurant event planning software can help you increase footfall, reservations, and your revenues. It’s much faster and simpler than using handwritten notes and excel sheets to keep guest data.
Software like Servme is also easy-to-use. Don’t take our word for it, it’s what our customers think!
Want to see how Servme can improve your restaurant operations and help you manage events? Try it today!
Nada Sobhi
Table Management
