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Restaurant.com........anyone use this service?

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GeorgiaPizza

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Does anyone use this service? If so, your thoughts? They called me and I agreed to listen, I have a appointment Monday.
 
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I used rest.com for a while. I guess you could say it worked exactly how they said it would. You DONT pay for them to put you on there site. They give you great feedback with the mandatory surveys and comments from the customer. Im not big into coupons so it got kinda annoying giving away 10 dollars worth of food to a customer who would have bought it anyway. Most of the Rest.com customers that actually found me on there, only came for the deal. Plain and simple…if you come and get 20$ worth of food for 10$ every time, we are never going to make money off you and we might as well close the store, we are not in this for community service. It was mostly bargain hunters. I was not down with it. If you need a boost. It could come from there but watch what kind of boost you get, Its not fun working extra just to make the same money.
Good luck
 
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Dont do it unless…you are a pizzeria that offers a true dining experience that includes dining pricing, liquor and desserts.

WHY? I made the mistake of doing something similar with a TV Station and boy you get the best of the worst customers.

The certificate is for 10.00…the pizza with tax is 11.76 and they have no idea why we cannot take a cc for the 1.76. Next comes the person(s) that only buy when they have the certs…their bill is 9.99…they give you the cert and come back again the next weeks and do the same…POS shows this.

The business that benefits from this is one that has an average in house dining bill of lets say 70.00 and your get a cert for 25.00. You have a customer that at least covered the food cost and will hopefully return again for the great food and service.

Use the money you dont give away to the certs and use it for current customer marketing.
 
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OK, well let me edumacate you on restaurant.com . They approached us during the beginning of the whole economy scare episode last Fall. They got me when they explained that it would fill my empty seats, which in turn brings in more paying customers. What we got was a ton of bottom feeders who were very rude to my servers, and extremely demanding. :evil: It got to the point where my servers wouldn’t wait on them anymore. I called to cancel and they explained a few features of the program I wasn’t utilizing, such as the feedback comment feature, some general survey details and overall monetary reports. I agreed to stay listed but I went dark for the Summer months. On Sept 1st we had about 25 restaurant.com guests bombard us, nothing changed same crowd. so I called them back to try make this whole thing work properly, and this is what we did. I put a limit on how many certificates they sell for our restaurant, I also raised the amount they have to spend to actually use the certificate. Now they can buy a 25$ cert for 10$, but need to spend 50$ to use it instead of 35$. Instantly solved my concerns. No more bottom feeders, a more appreciative guest pool, and I make more on each table. Now we get 1,2 maybe 3 a night on a busy night, they fill some empty tables and more cars in the lot, I make more money and my servers get their 18% gratuity on a 50$ + check. If you use it wisely, it is a good tool. Sorry if I droned on, I’m tired, busy weekend! PM me if you want more details.
Willi :D
 
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Banana…Great Remedy…if they allow you to change the program. I only wish that the TV station allowed it…and I say again…I will NEVER do it again…I would rather use the marketing money elsewhere…and YES…they were ALL bottom-feeders.

Steve
 
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We black out Fridays and Saturdays and will black out the summer months this year…
 
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I hated that website. I had a couple issues with it that i did not care for. First, it appeared that a person could buy the gift certificate for less than it was worth. Uh hello, how’s that work??? Second, being a certificate that the person just printed off the internet, they could easily print multiple copies of it. If you didnt call it in to validate it when the person gave it to you, it was possible that it was a copy. Third, and this one got me a couple of times, most people, including my staff, don’t read the terms and conditions that are printed on the page. I believe one time we actually gave a person back change on an unused portion of the certificate.

As for the bottom feeders, it is a problem. In my opinion, the only ones that know about the site are the ones that scour the internet for coupons and discounts. I’ve never seen the site advertised anywhere and the only way i found out about it was when the coupons started coming in.

If you do decide to use the site, follow hannahbananas advice, and also make sure your entire staff knows about them and how to handle them. Personally, i’ll never use the site again, and i would recommend people to not use it as well.
 
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