In the F&B landscape, efficient reservation management is no longer a luxury. It’s essential. But before diving headfirst into development, consider this: should you build your own reservation system? Or should you use a third-party, ready platform?
Building your own in-house reservation system is rarely a recipe for success. While the idea of complete control might seem appealing, the reality often involves significant costs, ongoing maintenance headaches, and a missed opportunity to leverage specialized expertise.
In this article, we’ll cover what’s involved in building your own system and the benefits of restaurant reservation management software. We’ll also cover the top features you can find in restaurant reservation software and what makes it a strategic move for your brand.
The allure of in-house: A misleading recipe
The temptation to build a custom system stems from the desire for total control. You envision a solution perfectly tailored to your unique needs, seamlessly integrating with your existing operations.
However, this "perfect fit" often comes at a steep price.
Here are a few of the hurdles and costs associated with building your own reservation system:
Requires a specialized development team
Building and maintaining the software requires hiring and retaining a team of tech professionals (team leader, frontend/backend, UI/UX).
This team is crucial for the initial build, ongoing improvements, and ensuring the system is user-friendly for restaurant staff.
Expensive financial investment
Creating a custom system involves significant upfront and ongoing costs, potentially ranging from $20,000 to over $40,000 initially, plus continuous salaries for the development team and maintenance expenses.
Long development time
Developing a functional reservation system takes a considerable amount of time (6-12 months), delaying its implementation and the potential benefits for the restaurant.
Demands constant development and upgrades
Like any software, a custom reservation system requires regular updates, bug fixes, security patches, and new features, necessitating a continuous commitment of development resources.
Difficult to integrate across multiple branches
Expanding restaurants face the complexity of ensuring the custom software can seamlessly manage reservations and data across all locations while providing individual branch insights.
Requires ongoing staff training
The restaurant is responsible for creating training materials and conducting continuous training for staff on how to use the new system, especially with new hires and software updates.
Must integrate with other essential software
The custom system needs to connect with various external platforms like POS, payment processors, CRM, marketing tools, and third-party booking sites to streamline operations and maximize reach.
Further reading: 21 Restaurant Marketing Ideas to Drive Guest Spending
Why use a reservation management system for your restaurant?
Let’s look at the top benefits of using a restaurant reservation management system.
Handle reservations, walk-ins, waitlists, cancellations, and seating arrangements in real time
Accept reservations from multiple sources, including your website, booking widget, social media platforms, and third-party partners.
A built-in restaurant CRM lets you collect customer data and create guest profiles.
Includes a table management system and restaurant floor planning software that lets you redesign your restaurant floor plan. This includes adding new seats, combining tables for large groups and dining events, among others.
Measure various metrics and guest analytics in your restaurant.
Collect post-visit feedback through automated guest surveys.
Integrate with platforms like Google My Business, Zomato, and Tripadvisor to increase online visibility and drive more bookings.
Seamlessly connect with your restaurant’s POS system to track guest spend, process payments, and view live order data - whether on-premise or for online bookings.
There are other features you may find that vary depending on the reservation software you’re using. For example, some software will help you
Manage server shifts based on needs and peak hours.
Create restaurant marketing campaigns through emails, SMS, and Whatsapp for restaurants. This includes sending personalized messages to boost loyalty.
Create and manage digital menus.
Plan, promote, and manage dining events.
Among other features.
A menu of benefits: Choose a ready reservation solution
Modern reservation systems go far beyond just taking bookings - they act as a centralized platform that connects your operations, streamlines your workflow, and delivers powerful guest insights.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, consider the robust features and cost-effectiveness of specialized restaurant reservation software:
Restaurant-focused features
Restaurant reservation systems are created to serve different types of restaurants. For example, Servme helps dining concepts including single, multi-location, and restaurant groups.
Reservation software comes with various features built specifically for restaurants, including reservations, table management, and waitlists.
That’s in addition to sending confirmations, reminders, and other detailed reservation reporting.
Cost-effective and scalable
Subscription-based systems offer predictable costs, eliminating large upfront investments and ongoing maintenance expenses. This makes a reservation and seating management system much cheaper than building your own.
Depending on the system you’re using, you may be able to ask for additional features. Servme has been known to create features specifically for its customers.
This allows you to ask for features, while not having to incur the cost of building them in-house.
Expert support
Using reservation software gives you access to dedicated support teams, who can help you with onboarding new team members.
They can also train you and your team to use new features and answer pressing questions you may have about running operations efficiently.
Regular maintenance and updates
You don’t have to worry about conducting maintenance and resolving bugs or errors. The reservation software developers are responsible for that.
They also provide new features along with regular updates to new and currently available features.
More focus on core operations
Using a restaurant reservation management system, like Servme, allows you to focus on your restaurant’s core business operations. That is, serving guests, providing exceptional food and service and boosting guest satisfaction so they can visit you more often.
Seamless integrations
If you’re doing it yourself, you’ll have to get into partnerships and APIs with every integration you want. So, if you want to integrate with a booking channel, you have to manage the entire integration from A to Z.
If you change your restaurant POS system, you’ll need to integrate with a new one. The same applies to payment gateways, payment processors for collecting online reservation fees, among other integrations.
Reservation systems, like Servme, do all this on your behalf. All you have to do is enable the integration with a single click from your dashboard.
The image below explains this further.
Here are several types of integrations you get with Servme:
Booking channels: These include integrations with booking platforms, like Tripadvisor, Zomato, Michelin Guide, and others.
POS integrations: Seamlessly sync reservation data with your POS to track sales by table, server, and time slot. Generate various POS reports to gain valuable insights into customer spending habits.
Property management system: Integrate with Oracle’s property management system (PMS) for hotel dining concepts.
Try Servme’s reservation management system
Servme is a reservation and table management software built specifically for restaurants, restaurant groups, and hotel F&B concepts.
For years, we’ve helped hospitality businesses streamline operations, enhance guest experiences, and increase revenue - with powerful tools for reservations, marketing, payments, and more.
Some of our top features include:
Reservation, waitlist, and table and seating management
Built for restaurants and other types of dining concepts, Servme helps you manage operations from multiple devices, including web, tablets, and mobile phones.
Accessibility: Restaurants can use iOS apps for the iPad, iPhone, Android for tablets, and the web app.
Easy guest booking: Using a user-friendly reservation widget, your guests can make online bookings from anywhere. You can send a link to the widget via SMS, email, or WhatsApp. Or via your restaurant website, booking channels, among others.
New reservation features: Servme’s team is constantly adding new reservation management features and enhancing older ones.
Waitlist features: Servme offers waitlist management for online and offline waitlists, ensuring you keep track of guests, especially on busy days and during restaurant peak seasons. You can also engage guests with digital menus and promotional updates.
Table management: Beyond reservations, Servme's table and seating management software provides the flexibility to merge and combine tables as needed. This is supported by intuitive restaurant floor planning features that ensure a smooth flow and let you seat large groups and special events faster.
New updates based on customer requests
As mentioned, Servme regularly releases new features based on customer feedback.
Some of our top features based on customer recommendations include: manager's notes, auto-tagging, and shifts & events, originated from customer requests.
Booking channel partnerships and tracking
Servme is constantly adding new channels and opportunities so restaurants can get more online reservations.
We have a wide network for booking channels for global, UK, US, and Middle Eastern restaurants.
Globally, restaurants can get direct reservations from Facebook and Instagram. They can also use Reserve with Google. Other global integrations include Zomato, Tripadvisor, Michelin Guide, among others.
In the UK, Servme integrates with Tea Time UK.
In the Middle East, we have integrations with Saudi Arabia’s The Chefz and webook.
To ensure you’re making the most of your integrations, you can track the source of those bookings through Servme.
You can also track other restaurant metrics, like average check per table and RevPASH, from your dashboard and reports.
Restaurant marketing features
Besides the above, Servme offers a restaurant marketing automation platform, including email marketing features, SMS marketing, and WhatsApp Business for restaurants.
Whether you want to create a restaurant newsletter, run entire email marketing campaigns, or send personalized WhatsApp messages and responses, you can do all this and more from within Servme.
Further reading: How to Create a Personalized Messaging Strategy for Your Restaurant
More control over guest information with Servme’s CRM
With Servme, you already own the data. You can create guest profiles by collecting guest information through the reservation widget. Every piece of information your guest shares is instantly added to your restaurant CRM.
Servme also helps you merge guest profiles to avoid duplicates. You can use the auto-tagging feature to identify guest attributes, which you can later use in your marketing campaigns.
Higher restaurant revenues
Servme helps you reduce no-show guests and increase your restaurant’s sales by offering regular tips and insights.
You can also improve your revenues by collecting reservation deposits and cancellation and no-show fees.
Grab our templates for restaurant reservation, cancellation, and no-show policies
Choose expertise and growth
While the idea of building your own reservation system might seem appealing on the surface, the long-term costs and complexities often outweigh the perceived benefits.
Dedicated restaurant reservation software offers a more efficient, cost-effective, and feature-rich solution, allowing you to focus on serving guests and boosting your revenue. Not to mention, sustainable growth.
The bottom line? Don't build a system; build your restaurant.
Choose the solution that empowers you to do just that.
Mohammed Rafy
Operations
