The end of 2011 was an exciting time for us. We were busy launching ReServe Q™ online dining reservation software and gearing up for a busy New Year. We have quite a bit planned for 2012.

We will be expanding our technology platform through new and enhanced catering, event management, dining reservation and table management products, new systems and new platforms. We have hired new employees and built new partnerships. We are focused on enhancing the user experience with increasing product and support performance. And that’s just the beginning!

We have so much to do in 2012 and we look forward to sharing it all with you. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts, announcements and news throughout the year.

Does your venue have a banquet facility or a small private room in the back of the restaurant? How are you using that area? Restaurants with private dining rooms and banquet facilities can boost sales by catering private parties and functions such as weddings, holiday parties and business meetings. Maximizing that space can have a positive effect on your bottom line.

If you have private dining space, do you actively promote and/or provide details and contact information for guests regarding hosting an event at your venue?  If not, there’s no better time to start. Use your website, social media outlets and even table tents, menus and stand alone signage to advertise private dining space availability. Combine this with listings on sites like www.PrivateDining.com for further reach and you have another option to drive more business.

Here are some additional ideas. Offer restaurant-hosted events. For example, throw a Super Bowl party with appetizer and drink specials. Or, try a Valentine’s Day mystery dinner. Is your chef exceptional? Host a cooking demonstration or cooking classes for a small registration fee. This will expose guests to your space and boost your reputation in the community. Plus, a survey conducted by the National Restaurant Association says 64 percent of adults would attend chef’s table dinners and private tastings. What about a guest loyalty celebration? Invite your most loyal return guests for a special dinner thanking them for their patronage. Making guests feel special
gets them talking and Word of Mouth advertising is the greatest form of advertising. Plus, it’s free!

What better way to maximize revenue than by maximizing space.

Here’s an interesting thought. Our customers thrive on, and, at the same time, are often overwhelmed by details. It’s the minutia involved
in their everyday responsibilities that can make our users’ lives crazy. From last minute reservation cancellations to unexpected walk-ins, wine preferences for a birthday celebration to a frantic bride’s fourth menu change in two weeks –  all of these things are important, and when overlooked or forgotten, can throw everything out of whack.

When I get a phone call from a prospective customer, it’s usually because they are drowning in Post-it Notes and file folders, lost in a
sea of scratched up and wrinkled reservation book pages, or simply tired of bouncing between three or four computer programs to get one report printed. They are exhausted and looking for a better way to do business.

We know that, as a true solutions provider, we can’t make sweeping generalizations about that individual’s business. We can’t assume they
follow the same processes as other establishments, subscribe to similar business models as industry peers, or service the same demographic as a local counterpart. We treat them as individuals and pay attention to the details they share – the very same, very specific details they pay attention to every single day.

But that’s just the beginning. Once we talk with them and learn more about their needs, it’s time to share how our software can help them
more successfully manage those details. With ReServe, our customers can capture important bits of information to create an exceptional guest experience. And when our customers are too busy to ask for the details, we remind them. We want them to be able to treat all of their guests like VIPs from the get go because when our customers are successful, we’re successful.

Check out our latest press release:

ReServe Interactive Launches ReServe Gateway - Web Services Enabling Third-Party System Integration and Aggregated Data Analysis

ReServe Interactive, an industry leader in hospitality management solutions, has launched  ReServe Gateway™, a robust web services platform enabling enterprise customers to integrate and share operational and financial data stored in their ReServe Interactive software with third-party software applications to streamline operations, improve productivity and enhance guest services.

“Many of our customers require our software to share information with other systems that help them manage their business such as POS systems, CRM programs and financial applications,” explains Mike Edmeyer, Vice President of Sales for ReServe Interactive. “ReServe Gateway is a reliable, responsive and cost-effective engine that enables on-demand communication with any of these services and is seamless in even the most PCI compliant environments.”

ReServe Gateway supports ReServe’s entire software suite including Reservation Management functions such as the facilitation of checking dining availability, making and cancelling reservations, and reporting reservation activity; Table Management services including the checking of wait times, changing table status, recording dining preferences, and reporting turn rates; Event Management services that facilitate the reporting of event scheduling activity and financial details, and checking availability and booking events, as well as Contact Management services that facilitate account and contact detail management.

“Web services is a standard communication protocol used across a variety of industries which means it’s proven, efficient and effective. And it’s easy to integrate with any desktop or hosted application,” explains Lynn Carter, Chief Technology Officer. “It enables us to focus on our core competency, which is designing productivity software for restaurants and catering operations, and efficiently sharing important data that our systems accumulate with other business functions. ReServe Gateway transforms how our software is used within an organization, and we expect the resulting links between ReServe and other systems to expand rapidly, providing great value to our customers.”

Since 1996, thousands of users across more than 1,000 businesses and venues have successfully implemented our Catering, Event Management, Dining Reservation and Table Management Software across their locations. Check out the links below to see how these customers are working smarter, faster and better by taking advantage of the unique, efficiency enhancing features of our software.

McCormick & Schmick’s

Melting Pot

Harry Caray’s

Lucky Strike Lanes & Lounge

Sega GameWorks USA

Georgia Aquarium

Round Hill Country Club

Chicago Yacht Club

Hyatt Regency

Landry & Kling

Hilton Waikoloa Village

Treasure Island Hotel & Casino

Gaylord Entertainment

Icon Estates

Rubicon Estate

Have you seen our latest press release? Take a read…

ReServe Interactive Celebrates Continued Growth and New Product Initiatives in 2011

ReServe Interactive, an industry leader in dynamic hospitality management software, including dining reservation, table management, catering and event management systems, has achieved 14 consecutive years of growth with significant increases in key business areas including the acquisition of enterprise accounts with multiple installations.

In 2011, ReServe Interactive will introduce several new products that greatly expand the benefits of their software throughout an organization and provide cost-effective, targeted marketing to drive additional business. First to be released is ReServe Gateway, a robust web services platform that enables enterprise customers to integrate and share ReServe data intelligence with other systems, streamline operations, improve productivity and enhance guest services. 

Second, ReServe will launch ReServeQ, a platform enabling guests to make dining reservations or add themselves to a wait list using a mobile device such as an iPhone, Android or Blackberry. As part of the ReServeQ offering, ReServe is forging strategic partnerships with mobile application aggregators and online dining guides to greatly expand marketing reach for restaurants.

“2011 development plans bring functionality that offers an integrated enterprise view of financial and operational data in ReServe that can be easily extracted and used to improve operations and provide convenient guest services,” says Lynn Carter, Chief Technology Officer. “We are committed to incorporating leading-edge technology for the direct benefit of our users, ensuring that ReServe continues to remain an invaluable resource. Leveraging the fastest growing technology sector today, mobile applications and social networking, is a perfect example. Our offerings in this arena are seamlessly integrated with ReServe and provide great value to our customers by driving more business to their restaurants in a targeted and cost-effective manner.”

Carter also explains that development of these new web services is driven by the needs and requests of some of their larger enterprise customers, but the benefits of these enhancements positively impact all of their customers, as well as the restaurant industry as a whole.

“This past year exceeded our expectations. We maintained a strong presence with the small and mid-range markets while experiencing significant growth with our larger, multi-unit enterprise customers,” explains Mike Edmeyer, Vice President of Sales. “The fact that ReServe is the only tool on the market to adequately manage both events and dining reservations in one system has been a large reason for our success.”

About ReServe Interactive

ReServe Interactive specializes in Catering, Event Management, Dining Reservation and Table Managementsoftware applications for the hospitality industry. Established in 1996, ReServe Interactive software is used by more than 8,000 industry professionals across more than 1,000 hospitality venues nationwide including hotels, restaurants, sports and entertainment facilities, golf and private clubs, cultural institutions and wineries. The company has offices in Livermore, California and Delafield, Wisconsin.

We have a long list of restaurant customers who offer private dining space to their patrons. These restaurants have found a way to take full advantage of the unique opportunity private dining brings to expand their customer base and boost their bottom line.  

For example, McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants, Inc., one of the country’s leading seafood restaurants, offers on-site private and semi-private dining space across more than 90 locations. To support the company’s newly implemented National Accounts Program and accommodate its growing on-site catering and event management needs, McCormick & Schmick’s selected ReServe Anywhere®, our  web-based Catering & Event Management software.

ReServe Anywhere provides McCormick & Schmick’s national and on-site event sales staff with 24-hour access to real-time event and customer information in a centralized database, as well as streamlined local and global reporting tools.

“With ReServe, we have successfully launched our National Accounts Program, an initiative that was critical to growing our business,” explains Becky Dielschneider, National Director of Catering. “Now we have the productivity tools in place to streamline local and national event processes and maximize our banquet and private dining dollars.”

In addition to what the software has allowed them to do, they’ve mastered the art of exceptional customer service. While our products do things like help them manage their group reservations and repeat customers; control their seating inventory; or coordinate and manage labor resources, they restaurants have carefully selected customer-oriented employees that know exactly how to create unique dining experiences that include the perfect combination of service and personal attention.

While we provide an efficient way for them to manage operations, gather valuable customer data and market to their customer base, McCormick & Schmick’s has figured out how to combine the comprehensive functionality of our software with their superior customer service offering to build a profitable and growing private dining business.

To learn more about the ReServe Interactive and McCormick & Schmick’s partnership, click here.

It’s almost hard to believe that we are in our 15^th year of business. So much has changed since we introduced ourselves to the industry in 1996.  What started as an idea to help ourselves has become a force within the hospitality industry. We are literally changing the way our customers are doing business.

Since 1996, our catering, event management, dining reservation and table management product offering has grown to include a web-based solution; we interface with more than 10 industry-leading applications; and we service more than 8,000 users.

And now, in our 15^th year of business, we’re going to take our offering even further by introducing several new features and products including easily implemented web services designed for sharing data between different applications. We are also developing a system designed for publishing restaurant wait times on reader boards throughout a hotel property, as well as features for sharing customer data with a centralized CRM database. Most importantly, we will soon launch a dining reservation focused mobile platform to support iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices.

As time has gone on, we’ve continued to progress and remain a valuable tool for our customers. We’ve helped our customers increase efficiency, enhance productivity and boost revenue. Our platform remains current, ensuring users are able to use the most updated technology solutions to manage their businesses.

This year is a milestone in many respects and we are so grateful for the many customers, industry partners and loyal employees that have brought us to this day. We look forward to making 2011 an unforgettable year.

Here at ReServe Interactive, we’re very excited about the year ahead.  We’re directing our efforts toward the ever changing needs of our customers and the hospitality industry as a whole.  We’re focusing on web services, data integration and state-of-the-art technology advancements that not only benefit our customers’ productivity, but increase their profitability.

Keep your eye on our blog and watch for industry buzz on our latest catering, event management, dining reservation and table management product enhancements and offerings. In addition, you’ll learn more about some of our customers and the ways we’re making a difference in the way they do business, as well as select industry partnerships.

At ReServe Interactive, we embrace change and live for technological advancements. Especially when they enhance the way we serve our customers and the way our customers do business.

By the way, the first half of 2011 will bring the much anticipated launch of a new product designed for the restaurant industry. We’ll be sharing some more information soon, so keep tuning in.   

Here’s to a new year!

“ReServe is by far the BEST reservation/table management software I have ever used. I’ve used many different programs and nothing compares! ReServe can basically run the restaurant for me. I would gladly recommend ReServe to others.”  Rick Roberts, The Melting Pot Tucson

“I have been working on Reserve for 13 years. So with new staff coming on board I set them up with the training and decided to see what was new. It was great for me to learn all the new things that have been added in our updates but never really utilized. My staff really learned a lot and April was a great trainer! Thanks and look forward to the webinars.” Janelle Lembeck, Diablo Country Club

“Our experience thus far with ReServe, as far as timely support and response, has been nothing short of exemplary, right from sales through to planning and IT.  Thank you from our team for making this implementation so painless!” Christie Penner, The Charcoal Group of Restaurants

“We’re in the process of fully integrating the program, and our sales staff has been using the software for about 2 weeks & they’re loving it! I’m so happy to have ReServe, and am looking forward to increasing our revenue in the New Year!” Lily Watson, Sterling Affairs Catering

“As a former Delphi user, I find ReServe to be much easier to use, and I especially like the way the customer contact system works.” Sulema Kiekintveld, Wild Fire Grille