Opportunity:
Reviewing the critical points on feedback provided, I am able to see that this service speaks primarily from the customer needs perspective. Many of the folks who reviewed my concept indicated that this app would benefit them and or their family. However, those who commented with skepticism came from a perspective of the restaurant and whether or not this would be seen as an advantage over current systems or processes used. The primary question was would the restaurant see this as a disadvantage losing customer to restaurants with shorter wait times and or would restaurants be interested in adding a “call ahead reservation“ strategy to their current process.
Name: The Wait List App "Fast Casual Dining"
Market: My audience is geared towards community dining customers as well as large and small dining establishments scaling from corporate owned restaurants to mom and pop eateries. Specifically: Franchisers, Restaurants, Service Staff and Community Consumers.
Service: The link between wait times at sit down dining establishments providing the ultimate concierge service and dining experience for business meetings, lunch breaks, dinner with family, special occasions or just that valuable meal time in general.
Why: The idea is one that will help restaurants identify foot traffic to increase potential sales with capabilities that will target participating dining establishments, help customers locate time efficient restaurant options and place reservations.This process will deliver increased results and improve bottom lines.
Bottom Line: This idea behind my solution is one that will be attractive to bottom lines for diners and those who wish to utilize their time going out to eat efficiently. My concept is designed to target app savvy customers looking to eat on the go with options to maximize time vs. money spent on eating out. Have you ever waited forever to get your food and still paid for it? Did you go back? The fast food industry has come a long way in delivery services and certainly has earned some recognition. How is the wait time at dining establishments margin comparing to that? What about the wait time at sit down hot spots for business meetings, your lunch break, dinner with family, special occasions or just in general? These that I have mentioned can range from fast-casual to fine dining establishments and typically have wait times anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour and that is just to be seated at a table, for most businesses this could mean the process is slowing down their sales. Connecting all of the dots, I realized that wait time could be valuable to both customers and restaurants. The solution is not only one that I find useful not only to my unique needs where I've been the server and the customer, it provides a potential solution to help my community and local business small and large manage time and money.
Innovation:
The Wait List App is a cost effective application is built on a preference based interface and demographic data to book restaurant reservations while increasing restaurant sales. On average parties wait up to 23 minutes before being seated at a restaurant. Doesn’t seem like much, but when calculating that number against a sale, were talking 6.6 hours a week on average. That’s 6.6 hours of potential sales. Not only will the Wait List App help people save time, find food and offer convenience. Partnering restaurants will retain per subscriber data while paying a $2.00 referral fee to the Wait List App at the point of sale from a (lead) reservation.
Venture Concept:
My concept offers a time and money solution for the busy customers looking for quick and easy dining without the hassle of waiting and eliminates stress that takes away from the experience. This is a service concept for customers and restaurants but could also be considered a productivity product in respect to technology. The Wait List app offers a profile for users to best categorizes their wants and pairing with the need. Through this technology service, The Wait List App is the Ultimate Solution for Fast Casual Dining. Features will include the type of dining to locate in a timely manner, with reservation capabilities that include real time text response for:
- Business casual dining
- Family dining
- Budget friendly dining
- Carry out ordering
- Special occasions
The Wait List App is a cost effective solution to the restaurant industry designed to increase sales and improve the fast casual dining experience.
Minor Elements:
This opportunity is one that could continue to expand through innovative avenues reaching a wide span of markets. The major kickstart expenses would be hiring a programer to build the landscape functionalities. To start the app campaign the employee ratio could be relatively low and facilitated at a satellite office or a small incubator hub. I project the costs to arrive at $75,000.00 for the first year with a return of $200,000.00 in revenues for a market like Gainesville, Fl. These are conservative projections as this is a testing phase of my concept. The trends in Technology are difficult to forecast, it is hard to say if my concept will be beneficial in one market or across several markets over time. I am skeptical about going into business without the tools I will need to be successful. Two heavy stakes require resources of which I am limited to, financials and a programer to develop the service. I chose this concept for purposes of this class with no previous intentions of creating a concept such as the The Waitlist App.
Next Innovative Opportunity for Growth
Step 1: Establish an inherit partnership with a franchise group allowing the app to carry services into new demographic reaches with an alliance.
Step 2: Develop new markets, through research and development new markets will be identified for forecasted start up potential. Through my conversations one thing that I would consider adding is the ability to pay your bill from the application with your server at a dining establishment. This would allow the consumer and the wait staff to use mobile devices to complete transactions eliminating multiple computers for restaurants as well as a paperless option.
Step 3: The growth potential would be scalable through the use of social media platforms and behavioral buying algorithms. Technology is at a prime increase in today's economy, the potential is all about details, data and logistics.
Feedback:
Changes:
Customizing customer loyalty and retention functionalities to increase ROI’s. After analyzing the objectives and critical factors, I’ve strengthened my concept by adding a few additional layers. Here is how, in the beginning stages of my concept I had the idea in mind that this app would be an open canvas so to speak where all users would view waits within a radius. This increased objectives concerning the host (restaurants) who may be likely to resist the concept. The reason being, given the allusion that quicker service may increase competitor advantages and decrease customer traffic. Because this could lead to a threat, I have modified the landscape.
New Functions:
- Trackable rewards point system
- Menu suggestions
- Backend management panel
- Customized coupons ( participating restaurants can manage this feature)
- Order saving
- Store check- in
- Automatic payments
- Game functions while you wait to win discounts-- validation when seated at table only.
- Data revealing dining patterns for host users
- Increase business during off hours through special promotions and text messages through data mining capabilities.
- Send push notifications for current or upcoming events
- Loyalty discounts based on visits and check amounts
- Let customers make reservations in advance to eliminate the need to call ahead or show up early and wait in long lines.
This approach delivers advantages to the customer as well as the host and removes the “ Wait “ times and simply confirms the reservation as available. Before the emphasis was to alleviate the wait by viewing what time frames were visible. Now, features will operate in the way of a virtual concierge between the restaurant and the customer.
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