Yelp Guest Manager Brings Everything Restaurant Staff May Need to 1 Place

Yelp created a single space for its front-of-house products and features for restaurants such as Kiosk, online brand building, reservations, table management, takeout and Waitlist with Wednesday’s debut of Yelp Guest Manager. Yelp for Restaurants vice president of product Anthony Cross said in a blog post Wednesday, “This year, we’ve seen diners return to restaurants at record numbers. In fact, even amid the ongoing pandemic, diners seated via Yelp remained above 2019 levels in August 2021. Meanwhile, searches for takeout remain higher than pre-pandemic levels—up by 77% in August 2021 compared with August 2019. These trends illustrate a new normal for restaurants that need to manage the experience of both online and in-person diners at the same time the industry is facing an unprecedented labor shortage. At Yelp, we recognize that restaurants need a partner that helps streamline operations, allowing staff to focus on serving their diners and providing great customer service.” Yelp Guest Manager includes the following software solutions from Yelp for Restaurants: Reservations and Waitlist: Restaurants can easily integrate digital reservations and waitlists into their Yelp pages and websites, letting diners join the waitlist from home (or elsewhere), with accurate seat times and live status updates that helps reduce no-shows and line abandonment.Table management and point-of-sale features: Hosts and servers have access to what they need for smooth front-of-house operations including custom floor maps and sections, as well as integrations with POS and other systems.Takeout: Restaurants can add takeout orders, track them and notify guests via text message when their food is ready for pickup.Kiosk: Teams can focus on hospitality by allowing diners to check themselves into a digital waitlist upon arrival and receive automated wait times and text notifications with their table status. Kiosk is available as an add-on to Yelp Guest Manager.New languages: Kiosk is now available in Chinese (simplified and traditional), English, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese. Reservation Seating Conversion: Restaurants can see what percentage of their reservation parties were actually seated in the Business Owner application, enabling them to better measure the effectiveness of their reservation cancellation policies. Self-Serve Reservation Settings: Restaurants can adjust their reservations capacity directly in the Business Owner app. Hosts can now modify the minimum or maximum size for reservations, adjust the number of guests or parties that are accepted in 15-minute intervals and edit the pre-booking notes for guests without contacting the Yelp support team.Curbside SMS: Hosts can indicate when an order is curbside and automatically text the consumer with order updates. The confirmation text asks guests to text back when they arrive and provide details, such as their car make and model, in order to help ensure that hosts have the information they need to manage and deliver orders efficiently. Yelp also detailed integrations with Olo and Punchh for Yelp Guest Manager. The Olo integration will automate inputting new orders made on a restaurant’s Olo-powered website or app directly into the Yelp Guest Manager app, allowing for management of all front-of-house guests via one iPad. Restaurant partners that are Yelp Ads customers can place a pixel provided by Yelp on their Olo ordering portal to measure and attribute ad-driven and Yelp-assisted view-through and click-through conversions. And the Punchh integration will enable restaurants to provide personalized customer loyalty programs via rich diner data such as birthday and seating preferences. Finally, Yelp released a new business attribute that enables restaurants to self-identify as virtual or delivery-only. Cross explained, “Our new Virtual Kitchens attribute allows ghost kitchens, virtual restaurants and virtual food courts to easily identify themselves and their service areas to customers, eliminating customer confusion around their delivery experience. For customers who are looking to dine-out at a restaurant, this designation also reduces confusion by helping them understand that no seating is available and, in some cases, that delivery is the only way of ordering food from the virtual kitchen.” Businesses that wish to add the attribute can log into their Yelp for Business account, go to the Business Information section, click Add or Edit next to Amenities and More and click Yes next to the attribute they wish to activate. Cross concluded, “The National Restaurant Association’s most recent 2021 forecast projects that restaurant sales will total $789 billion in 2021, a nearly 20% increase from last year, creating growth opportunities for restaurants everywhere. We want to help restaurants capitalize on the growing demand that we are seeing in online and delivery and those returning to dining out. Restaurants can also expect more new Yelp Guest Manager features to be available soon.”