Your Guide to Toast Tables: How to Use Integrated Restaurant Reservation Software

Reservations are crucial to your restaurant, as they can help make things easier for both your guests and staff. They ensure customers have a guaranteed table, eliminating wait times and enhancing their dining experience.

By demonstrating a commitment to your guest experience, reservations can also foster loyalty. This leads to repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. 

Overall, reservations help strengthen your restaurant's customer base and contribute to its long-term success in a highly competitive industry. That being said, having a dependable reservation system with simple functionality — like Toast Tables — is essential to the success of your restaurant business. 

In this article, you will learn:

• How reservation software helps streamline operations 
• The benefit of using a direct point of sale (POS) integration for online reservations 
• How to get started with Toast Tables

Let’s dive in.

The importance of a restaurant reservation system

A restaurant reservation system can improve your operations and lead to happier guests and staff. Here are a few benefits of implementing a reservation system:

Convenience

In today’s modern world, customers appreciate the convenience of online bookings. Whether it’s from their mobile phones or laptops, being able to make a reservation ahead of time provides peace of mind and organization. Online reservations streamline the booking process, allowing guests to reserve a table at their preferred date and time. This eliminates the need for phone calls or walk-ins, saving time for both your guests and your restaurant staff. 

Accurate booking records

Additionally, online reservation systems provide an accurate record of bookings. This helps full-service businesses, whether they’re small restaurants or multi-unit establishments, to efficiently manage their table availability and allocate resources accordingly. This also prevents overbooking or double-booking situations, which helps ensure a smooth and organized dining experience for guests. After all, a double-booking hiccup is enough to cause a poor dining experience that drives guests away. 

Valuable table and guest management

Online reservation systems also offer valuable tools for table management, waitlist management, and guest management. Your restaurant business can efficiently organize its floor plan, optimize table turnover, and accommodate guest preferences. With real-time updates on table availability, staff can easily track and manage reservations, ensuring a smooth flow of service. 

Advanced communication for waitlists

Last but certainly not least, waitlist management features, which are built into many restaurant reservation systems, allow full-service restaurants to efficiently handle walk-ins and provide accurate wait time estimates. Some reservation tools, including Toast Tables, even provide text messaging support to notify guests when their reservation is booked and allow them to easily update it if necessary. By integrating waitlist management with online reservations, restaurants can notify guests when their table is ready, minimizing wait times and enhancing guest satisfaction.

Not sure which restaurant reservation system to use? Check out this article on the best reservation mobile apps and software to compare pricing and find the best option for your restaurant needs. 

Why you should integrate your reservation software with your point of sale

One of the many benefits of using Toast Tables is its direct integration with Toast POS. The POS integration allows for updates and notifications in real-time, making day-to-day operations easier. For example, when a guest swipes their credit card to pay their tab, it will update your reservation system so your host can plan to seat that table soon. This way, your restaurant host can spend less time checking the status of tables and more time greeting and accommodating your guests. 

In addition, if there are any no-shows, changes, or cancellations to a reservation, an integrated system will update both the reservation and the POS, ensuring accurate information is available to all staff members. Integration also provides valuable insights and reporting capabilities. Your restaurant management can access comprehensive data on reservations, including peak hours, popular dishes, and guest preferences. This information helps in making informed business decisions, such as optimizing staff schedules, what to market on social media, what to include in your email marketing, or tailoring the menu to meet guest preferences.

Overall, using a reservation platform that integrates with your POS helps you avoid manual exports and updates, freeing your staff up to provide the best guest experience possible.

The power of Toast, for your host

Toast Tables is your one-stop, integrated waitlist & reservation solution — built to enhance hospitality, simplify table management, and keep guests coming back.

With Toast Tables you can keep your guests happy by seating them efficiently and personalizing their experience. Toast Tables gives them easy access to reserve a table or join the waitlist directly in Google Search and Maps. You can also send personalized SMS (text messages) to guests to help communicate changes and help you avoid no-shows.

Toast Tables makes your day-to-day easier, as fewer systems to manage allows you more time to spend with guests. The setup is simple and you can download the host app to automatically import your floor plan and server roster from your Toast POS. 

Toast Tables makes your staff’s shifts easier as well. You can keep your servers happy by seating based on built-in cover counts and "next up" rotations that show time since the last table. Keep your restaurant hosts happy with the convenient POS integration so they no longer need to constantly check on table status. 

Interested in learning more about implementing Toast for your restaurant? Click here to request a free demo. Already a Toast customer? Click here to see how you can get started with Toast Tables.