Burger & Lobster turns to technology to manage customer journey at Cardiff

The 1,100-cover restaurant, which opened in the city centre at the end of last year, is the company's largest and its first to take reservations. 

Burger & Lobster operations director Simon King said he had decided to work with Call Systems Technology (CST) to install its DineTime solution to manage the restaurant's table plan and provide staff with accurate wait times which could make the customer's experience better, but also ensure the business was more efficient with labour costs. 

"We know that having staff manage wait lists on the door is a hugely labour intensive exercise, so with Cardiff being our largest and first site out of London to take reservations, we needed to partner with a savvy supplier like CST, to provide a solution that could work hand-in-hand with our front of house teams to deliver outstanding customer service," he said. 

DineTime gives front and back-of-house staff information on the status of every table, advising where each one is in its dining journey. Important data is provided to the restaurant to enable them to effectively manage each stage of the customer journey, whilst also delivering real-time analysis on the performance of a single or multiple sites to drive efficiencies.

Burger & Lobster also receives insight online via a special web portal and a daily email to the account holder to enable them to run, view and print reports for any given day, week or month. They can then view statistics on reservations, wait lists, table turns and seating data to assist in analysing key trends within the site.   

“We’re particularly impressed with its reporting capabilities, which is bespoke to our site," said King. "We can analyse reservations against walk-ins, to maximise on seating efficiencies.

"Maximising efficiency on table turns across every shift is very important to us. To give you an example, on February 14, we hosted 566 parties across 1,674 covers, with an average wait time of just 11 minutes. That’s the sort of information we need to ensure we continue to be successful in Cardiff.”