Umair Haque at BRITE ‘09 conference from BRITE Conference on Vimeo.

It is with that mentality that we recently created a easy to use and understand Return on Investment Worksheet for people interested in knowing what Tripleseat can do for them.  In short, Tripleseat can DOUBLE your Private Dining and Special Event Business.

How? Let me list the ways and then with the ROI Worksheet you can see for yourself if it applies to your restaurant.

1. Multi Task / Increased Selling Time-Studies show that automated account management systems decrease paperwork and wasted time. Increased selling time nets at least 2 additional booking per user, per year.
2. Lost Business Tracking and Found Bookings-Tripleseat can track the who, what, where, when and why of lost business — making it possible to fill last minute cancellations and solicit upcoming events.  In addition Tripleseat can capture leads that would otherwise be lost due to a poor process like leads lost in a spam filter of e-mail or lost notes.
3. Lead Management and Multi Store Booking-With Tripleseat Lead Booking Engine, your sales people will now be equipped with advanced tools that will allow them to respond quickly before your competitors even pick up the phone. If you have multiple restaurants add bookings to your sister restaurant if you are already booked.
4. Improved Customer Service-Instantly confirm space, dates, and menus. Your  customers won’t be contacting the competition, while waiting for your sales staff to research their request.  Tripleseat lets you pinpoint active accounts to provide uninterrupted customer service. Tripleseat provides on-line customer information, access to past account history, and more. With typical sales manager turnover, this results in a minimum of 2 additional per year, per user.

If that is not enough for you, think about this for a moment, Nations Restaurant News recently stated  “National Restaurant Association’s 2008 Restaurant Industry Operations Report, parties and banquets at full-service restaurants with average checks of $25 and up account for between 10 percent and 15 percent of total sales” What this means is that if your restaurant does $1M in gross revenue, $100K of that (10%) is in Private Dining alone. That is a big number. How would you like to double that number, to say $200K? Who wouldn’t?

Click HERE to use the ROI worksheet .  If you like, you can give us a call and we can go through it together.

Time to Double Up.

]]> http://blog.tripleseat.com/2009/07/double-your-catering-biz/feed/ 0 http://blog.tripleseat.com/2009/06/catering-v16/ http://blog.tripleseat.com/2009/06/catering-v16/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:21:51 +0000 jono http://blog.tripleseat.com/?p=130 New Updates and News on Tripleseat

A. Updates to Tripleseat
B. Lead Booking Engine
C. Welcome to our new Business Development Managers
D. Partnerships with Groupdyne and Affinity Merchant Networks

A. Yeah Updates
Booking Tab and Calendar Go Dynamic
I am pleased to announce the filter updates for the Booking Tab and Calendar page. A number of  users where asking if the Booking area of Tripleseat can have additional filters like Booking Date Range and Booking Owner. In addition to the filters multi select was also requested. So in typical Tripleseat fashion we added the requested filters and also included multi select. To make it easy, the bookings will now automatically appear as you are selecting the filters. So, if you want to see all the booking in the month of June for 1 by booking manager, room, and status of closed lost just select the filters and watch the information appear as you choose your criteria.
But wait, there is more. Like what the output is from your filters? Now you can select the Excel icon and have the information exported to Excel in seconds. Need a booking report for June? No problem, just select your filters and export to Excel and you are done. We even included a total column for the F&B minimum and actual fields in Excel.

Filters for the Calendar Too
The Calendar page also has new filters. You can now filter the calendar by Booking Manager and multi select by status and/or rooms. Did you recently turn down business because you did not have the space but now have a cancellation and want to fill that space with the turn down? Simply go to the calendar and filter by restaurant, select “closed lost status” and now you can see who to call back to fill the room. Similiar to the Booking Area the Calendar will dynamically change as you select your filters. There are thousands of combinations so filter away.

Need For Speed
The Tripleseat speed demons have been hard at work under the hood to add additional speed to the site. The most noticeable place you will see a big speed increase is exporting data to Excel. Thousands of bookings exported to Excel is not a problem. It now only takes seconds for thousands of items like contact information to be exported.

B. Lead Booking Engine
The Tripleseat Lead Booking Engine has really taken off. Since the introduction of the Lead Engine Tripleseat has captured over 600 leads for the customers taking advantage of this great new feature.

The theory of prospects wanting the convienence and control of being able to request information for their events has proven to be correct as more and more leads are now coming from the web than from the phone or e-mail. The added bonus with the Tripleseat Lead booking Engine is now you can convert a lead to an Account/Contact and a Booking with two clicks of the mouse. Gone are the days of lost leads or searching thru old e-mails trying to find the lead contact information or details. If you want the lead booking engine give us a call. It only takes 5 minutes from your call to the creation of the landing page.

C. Welcome to our new Business Development Managers
New Offices in Phoenix, Portsmouth NH & Washington DC
Despite the lousy economy Tripleseat has really grown,adding new customers weekly from San Francisco to Maine. Because of this growth I am happy to announce the addition of Jim and Erik in Phoenix, Sean in Washington DC, and Bonnie in Portsmouth NH. They will be responsible for selling Tripleseat and supporting you, the customer. The team represents over 100 years in combined experience in both hospitality and software.  I am super excited to have assembled a “A” team who are dedicated to helping and supporting restaurant Owners and Operators with their Private Dining needs.

D. Partnerships with Groupdyne and Affinity Merchant Networks
Marketing Partnerships to Help You Grow

Tripleseat has entered into two partnerships that promises to help you grow both your Private Dining and a la carte business. Any partnership that I do is always with you, the customer in mind. Both Groupdyne.com and the Affinity Merchant Network are great marketing programs that can really help you drive your business

Affinity Merchant Network
As you know, traditional marketing methods — mailings, newspaper ads, radio promotions, etc. — are expensive, and there is no guarantee they will work.  Affinity Solutions, the operator of the Affinity Merchant Network, provides access to reward and loyalty programs that increase sales and raise the average spend of your customers. Across the U.S., retail partners in the Affinity Merchant Network have access to 60 million  cardholders from hundreds of financial institutions.  By joining the Affinity Merchant Network, your business can receive a boost in incremental revenue using a marketing method that’s effective, easy to measure, and more scalable than traditional advertising. By joining the Affinity Merchant Network you will receive:
Exposure to hundreds of thousands of potential customers through marketing sponsored by financial institutions like Sovereign Bank and Capital One

1. An Account Manager to guide you through the process of joining the Affinity Merchant Network so you capture all the benefits of your membership
2. Detailed monthly reporting on sales consolidated by reward program and offer
3. Marketing collateral for your store
4. As a customer of Tripleseat there is no cost to join the Affinity Merchant Network.

Groupdyne.com
Groupdyne.com currently places over $175,000 each week in group dining reservations at venues nationwide. Groupdyne.com can increase your dining revenues by as much as $50,000 annually. Groupdyne.com, is exciting hospitality and restaurant marketing firm, helps people find and book their perfect event at a restaurant, hotel, banquet hall, golf and country club or special event venue. They improve the on line exposure and visibility of restaurants that offer group dining through our interactive website, partnerships with over 250 corporations and a national travel partner as well as our free concierge service.

As a partner with Groupdyne we will be able to provide a discounted monthly rate and integration to the Tripleseat Lead Booking Engine. This is a great service and perfect marketing opportunity for you to extend your on line presence beyond your website.

Together the new business development team represents over 100 years of experience of hospitality technology and sales. We now have offices in Arizona, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Washington DC, and of course Omaha

I am super excited to have assemble a team that witnessed and participated in the sales and catering revolution for hotels and is now positioned to do the same for restaurants.

Now is a good time if you are in the restaurant private dining business help is on the way!

That was a recent quote from an e-mail exchange that I had earlier with someone in the restaurant and software business. It made me chuckle at first, then, when I thought about it, I felt frustrated.

Let me explain. Group Dining, Private Dining, catering, whatever you want to call it is more than “found money” it represents over 30% to 40% of a restaurants entire revenue. If a restaurant is generating $1M a year, then the Group Dining business is $300K. That is more than found money, that is real money.

So, can anyone explain to me why restaurants will not invest less than 1% of gross private dining/catering revenue on group dining business to improve sales and increase leads? It strikes me as odd that restaurants will spend more than 1% on overall gross revenue on their cable and entertainment bill which has zero return but when it comes to improving the top line it becomes a paralyzing fear of change.

Now to be fair, not all restaurants are afraid. Take our customers for example. They were willing to spend less than 1% of their private dining gross revenue to put themselves in a position to win. And win they have. Tripleseat has generated over $600K in leads to our customers in less than 60 days. Talk about real money.

The business is out there.  Tripleseat customers are booking business and capturing leads like crazy. Don’t make private dining “found money” make it real money.

Fast forward to May of 2009 and BigOmaha.  BigOmaha by their description is ” What happens when the country’s foremost creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators descend on one place? That place explodes. Which is precisely what we plan for Omaha.

The energy will be impossible to contain. We will begin building communities, companies and friendships. We will inspire new thoughts and completely new ways of thinking. We will develop visions: personal, shared, and civic.”

The best part of this is that BigOmaha was thought of and produced by Dusty, Jeff Slobotski and the  team over at Brighmix. These guys took a idea and fierce sense of pride in their town and created what can only be said is the best conference I have ever been too.

To be honest, I was embarrassed to say I was from Boston because I have never, I mean never,  seen what these guys from “Omaha” did in Boston.  All the speakers had original thoughts around a theme that most people never even want to talk about. Everyone was genuine and not there to promote a product or to prove they were the smartest guy in the room (try pulling that off in ‘Ol Beantown) No long winded speeches on theory and conjecture but real world examples of what works and what does not when it comes to technology and life.

So I am putting Boston on notice, watch out, because Omaha is coming and they are kicking ass.

We think we hit it out of the park. Tell us what you think. To dowload a .PDF of the brochure click HERE

Melissa Wilson, Technomic Principal on catering and private dining. “…. our initial findings show that chain restaurants have a viable opportunity to capture a larger share of this (catering) market and improve same-store-sales without cannibalizing their dine-in traffic.” Wilson noted that some chains that have already invested resources in developing this business(catering and Private Dining) are reporting double-digit sales growth.”

What are you waiting for? Tripleseat is here to help you grab that revenue.

Basically when a host/hostess sits three parties in a Servers section at the same time the Server has been “triple seated” This generally happens when a restaurant is very busy and the hostess/host is just trying to turn tables as fast as possible.

Coming up with the name Tripleseat was for the most part easy. What has been very difficult is describing who Tripleseat is.

When asked who we are I have thrown out some pretty vanilla lines like we are catering software company, or private dining web application, or a CRM for the catering business. After reading and listening to Seth Godin I have come to a better answer to the question.

Tripleseat is a small web development company that makes applications for restaurateurs who want to be remarkable.

I like this answer better for a number of reasons. The first reason being it is true. We are small and our goal is to stay that way. Why? Because decision are made faster and we make better products because we are closer to the customer. The second reason I like the answer is because Tripleseat is not for everyone. If a restaurant is looking for a silver bullet to fix their problems then by looking at us to fix it they are looking at the wrong place. A restaurant needs to be remarkable as is explained in by this blog post by Marketing Restaurant Online

Tripleseat,the product, is by far and away the best web sales and lead management application for restaurants. We run our business to be remarkable so it just makes sense that we would have customers that share that same core values.