Big November Update

Eat App's August updates include numerous enhancements to streamline restaurant operations and improve guest experiences.

The update includes the ability to save payment details and capture later, less clicks during reservation creation, edit any field any time, and payment rules in the automation engine.

We also have GDPR-compliancy features, guest seating and lateness tracking, and customizable statuses!

Let's go through them...

Index of Updates

• Search when creating reservations
• Edit guest and reservation details anytime
• Add or capture payments with automation rules
• GDPR marketing opt-in
• Track lateness and seating durations
• Custom statuses
• Unified availability view
• Custom booking widget fields
• Event tickets
• Preference selection
• Automated WhatsApp messaging
• Support for JCC Payment Gateway
• Improved country code selector
• Seating timestamps
• Blast marketing via WhatsApp
• Group reservation history
• Better merge tool
• Toggle confirmation messages
• Custom notes display
• Duplicate shifts and preferences
• More reports and filters
• Room grouping
• Downloadable reviews and payments
• Guest left timestamps
• Mandatory reservation editor
• Faster desktop load speed
• More app space
• Self-service add-ons
• Discount codes for payments
• New POS integrations
• iPad: Save card on file
• iPad: Reservation creation hints
• iPad: Daily Huddle Report
• iPad: Floor plan tags
• Ongoing UX improvements

Search when creating

We made it easier to search for guests while you are creating reservations to save you time

As you type, guests are searched for on your behalf!

Editing guest and reservation details any time

It is now possible to edit all information about your guests and reservations at any time

Previously you would have to go into edit mode to change reservation details or specific guest details, now you can do it all from the reservation open screen to save you time.

Add or capture payments when creating automation rules

Let’s say a customer makes a booking but it's a large party. Now you can create a payment and send an email if a customer is part of a large party in this case.

Because it is an action in our automation engine, you can do any combination of conditions to create or capture payment rules. Isn’t that cool!?

GDPR Marketing opt in when creating reservations

Now you can add your own SOP at the restaurant for marketing opt-in. Opt in your customers for marketing as they walk through the door or book on the phone. 

See who's late, and how long your guests have been seated

Just in case you need to prioritize seating, you can now see who is late and who has overstayed their reservation directly in the reservation list!

Create your own custom statuses

Got a special operations setup? Specific pre-seating areas? We’ve got you covered. You can now create custom statuses for your operations team. Find custom statuses configuration in the side menu under Guests -> Status configuration. 

Let’s say you have a custom status for ‘No post’ guests. You can make sure those guests receive extra communication. The different combinations are endless and totally up to you!

Note: You can also now use custom statuses when creating automation rules! For example, if they are ‘On hold’ you can send them a nice message to let them know that their reservation is on hold. If they are ‘Waiting for a table’, you can send them a nice message to let them know.

View your availability in One Place!

You can now configure your availability for shifts, events, seating options, packages, as well as offers in one place. Check out the availability calendar under Availability -> Calendar from the side menu. 

Collect more information on your booking widget with your own fields. 

We recently released the ability to support custom fields on the booking widget.

You can now add your own fields and make them option or not on the booking widget. 

Tickets Please! Create your own tickets

Create custom fields that can be used for ticketing for events (as well as charging per cover at different rates per ticket). You can create new tickets by following our tickets guide here 

• Go to guests -> custom fields
• Select the type ‘countable custom fields’ 
• Create a payment rule by going to Availability -> Pre-payments 
• Go to Integrations -> widget -> form fields
• You should see the countable custom fields you just created  in the widget form fields config section. They will be shown as ‘custom fields’. Set the ones you want as ‘required’ or ‘required if payment rule exists’.
• Save your changes and click ‘Go to widget’ to see your custom fields.

See the video here

Preference selection when creating reservations

We have now made it possible to select the customers chosen preference when creating reservations over the phone or for walk-ins. This allows you to send more personalized messaging for those guests automatically, or, make sure you ask for the right payment or seat them at the right place when their turn comes!

Force confirmation before seating guests at a table that is already occupied

We added an optional configuration to be alerted if you try seating a guest at a table that is already occupied.  

Automated WhatsApp messaging

Looking for the most highly adopted messaging platform that guarantees your guests see it? WhatsApp is what you need. 

Eat App now supports fully brandable, fully customizable, full automated WhatsApp reservation messages. 

Activate your free quota, or, check out with a WhatsApp package by going to Messaging -> Automated Messages -> WhatsApp from the side menu. 

Support for JCC Payment gateway

Using JCC payment gateway? Now we have added support for this payment provider! We don’t take commission (like with all our payment integrations), so maybe this is a good path for you to take payments!

A better country code selector

We have improved country code selection across the app experience. It should be much easier for your guests and your staff to enter phone numbers by country code now. 

Seated at time in the reservation page

You can now see what time your guest was seated at, as well as a timeline of all reservation status changes. 

Click the (i) icon at the bottom of the reservation page to see the timeline!

New language support

Slovenian was added to the list of supported languages. Need more languages? Let us know!

Blast Marketing messaging

I am thrilled to inform you that our WhatsApp Blast Marketing Pilot is live today!

In this pilot you can: 

- Create and Send templated and branded blast whatsapp marketing messages to your customer base (just like SMS and Email)

- Register WhatsApp via Eat App with your own private number for custom branding and messaging or use Eat App directly to get started straight away!

Reservation history across your group

We upgraded the UI to make it easier to see the reservation history of your guests across the group and identify guests from other groups. Go to the ‘other reservations’ tab on a reservation with a guest with history to see all the other reservations the guest has had, as well as which restaurant in your group they visited. Isn’t that exciting!?

Merge tool upgrades

We spent a lot of time making sure our merge tool is more accurate and more usable. Merging is a complex thing, but we simplified it so that: 

• You can select the fields you want to keep when merging guests
• You can ignore irrelevant emails or phone numbers when detecting duplicates

Note: currently you have to wait a day for the merged duplicates to disappear from the list after merging. 

Countable custom fields (tickets), are now easy to edit in the reservation page.

If you are taking a call over the phone and the guest has 2 kids, 1 bubbly package and 1 regular package, you can now update these fields by simply pressing a ‘+’ or ‘-’ on the reservation open page for that reservation. 

If you need to create tickets, please see the ‘Tickets please!’ section above. 

When I say don’t send confirmation messages, don’t send them

We made an update on the Reservation creation experience so that if you toggle off to send a reservation confirmation message, the rule is respected. Equally, to avoid any mistakes, when you go to Messages -> Automated messages -> Events -> Reservation confirmation/Reservation Requested and turn it off for In-house messages, sending messages on the reservation screen will be switched off too. 

Adjusted the way you view notes 

In the reservation open state (note that if you want, you can also separate out the notes in to your own custom fields such as seating notes, dining notes, other notes etc. This is completely tailorable to your restaurants needs). 

Duplicate your shifts and preferences whenever you need

It is now possible to duplicate your shifts and preferences whenever you need to! 

Click on the burger menu of any shift or preference when updating them to quickly duplicate them (very useful for handling duplicate shifts or preferences for after special seasons or holidays). 

Reports filters and columns

Now we have more filters and columns in the reports to use including custom fields as their own column and birthday filter for marketing segmentation purposes or manual print outs. 

Payment creation experience improvements

When you go to create a payment rule, you’ll now experience a much smoother payment creation process. If you have payments enabled, you can go to your reservation -> payments tab and try it out!

Group by rooms

We added the ability to group by rooms on the reservation list to make searching easy for assigned hosting teams.

Give it a try! Press the filters option on the reservation list to see all the reservation grouping options available.

Download your reviews and payments

We now made it possible to download reports for your reviews and payments individually.

When did my guest leave? Guest left at timestamp added

We added a field to identify the time that the guest left the venue. This helps with quickly identifying when a customer may last have left a personal belonging at the table or for any other issues that may arise. We’ve got your back now!

Mandatory Reservation Editor

Sick of not knowing who edited what and getting confused? Activate a mandatory reservation editor option in the permissions which makes sure that the editor is logged on every change. 

Increased the desktop load speed

We recently noticed that some venues are getting busy! This means that we spent some time optimizing for those heavier restaurants to make sure that making and taking reservations is fast and seamless as possible. This has been improved for opening reservations in the list and when creating reservations, but we have lots more speed improvements on their way. 

More space on the app

We moved payment reminders or SMS/WhatsApp usage messages to the top bar, decreased the bar size a little and moved things out of your way! We understand that it’s not so important to your day to day operations so we moved the banners out of your line of sight and gave you more space for important operations. 

Charts and graphs for checkbox custom fields

If you want to be able to track custom information about your reservations and report on it, now you can! Our dynamic reporting suite has been upgraded with the ability to see all stats about these custom field types. 

Addon purchases and upgrades

Did you know that you can just upgrade your package yourself in a few clicks? Well now you can find it easier! We added 2 options under Account Management on the side bar; ‘Purchase a Chit Printer’ and ‘Purchase an Addon’

Discount codes for your payments

We recently made it possible to generate discount codes for your payments! This is an early pilot and we are looking for pilot customers. Are you in? Reply to us here to express your interest and we will put you in touch with the right person. 

New POS providers we can integrate with

We just added a few more POS partner support to our network: 

• RistaPOS
• DotPe POS
• Digitory POS
• Lucid POS

(iPad only) Show the tags you want on the floorplan

Got specific tags you want to always highlight on tables such as ‘birthday’ or ‘VIP’ or ‘No post’? 

You can now configure whichever tags you want to show on the floorplan by going to Floorplan -> cogwheel (top right) -> Table labels -> Specific labels -> select the labels you want to show -> Apply labels button

(iPad only) Keep card on file and capture later

We added the ability to create links to send to customer from your iPad where you can keep the card on file and capture the payment later 

(iPad only) Reservation creation hints

Now when you create a reservation, it automatically scrolls to the newly created reservation making your creation experience flow better. 

(iPad only) Daily Huddle Report

Group up with your team and discuss the guests coming in for the day. Filter for the regulars, the VIPs, the birthdays, anniversaries, seating preferences & more! You can also compare different days of reservations and covers to assess how busy it will be, or, how you compared to a previous day. It also comes with a daily joke to lighten up the mood in the room. Check it out on the iPad App -> Reports -> Huddle Report. 

Lots of other UX Improvements across the board… How exciting!

We are constantly make experience improvements across the board to Eat App when we see commonalities in feedback. We strive to make Eat App the Worlds Best, Most Loved, All In One Guest Dining Experience Platform so all your valuable feedback is appreciated greatly. 

Thank you for being a part of the Eat App revolution. Let’s show the restaurant market how real operations succeed!