Dining through pre-ordered meals, mobile payments
The future for restaurants could include guests ordering meals before arriving to dine, and even paying via mobile phones, according to John Brennan, the Head of Mobility at Silicon Valley-based Leapset, which has a development centre in Sri Lanka. He also added “there has been some discussion of restaurants moving away from reservations because of the ‘no show’ problem where tables remain empty and cost the restaurant money”.
John Brennan
Speaking to the Business Times, Mr. Brennan, who is also the former President and Co-Founder of Buzz Table, which was acquired by Leapset late last year, described this start-up as follows: “At the most basic level, we allow a restaurant to text their guests when their table is ready. Below the surface we are a guest experience platform to bring you closer to your customers”. Elaborating, he also noted; “The front of the house, where the host lives, is quite chaotic and our system helps streamline operations and collect data to improve future operations”.
Commenting on the status of Buzz Table, he signalled that this service is still being offered separate from Leapset’s holistic, restaurant operating system-type platform, with Buzz Table still “signing on many restaurants that way”. He also put forward the possibility that Buzz Table could, some day, become available in Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, regarding his new role at Leapset, he indicated that it allowed him to spend more time on the product, basically focusing on its core and going deep, and making sure that Leapset was at the forefront of innovation, rather than waiting to see what competitors come up with and reacting. Said Mr. Brennan, “If it helps the restaurant improve the guest experience, we are thinking about it”. Mr. Brennan also highlighted his objective to re-define Leapset’s mobile strategy. Previously, the company was solely focused on building a merchant-oriented strategy, but now it had also brought mobility into the mix, to improve the guest experience. With Buzz Table’s recent acquisition, Leapset now had access to data from two mobile apps, Leapset’s, which catered to quick serve-type restaurants, and Buzz Table’s casual dining group, as well as the different types of customers and locales inherent in all this data, according to Mr. Brennan. He also said that Leapset was currently combing through all that data, looking for “bright spots” to focus on.