The other week I had to make dinner reservations on New Year’s Eve Eve. I called two popular restaurants on New York’s Lower East Side: Schiller’s Liquor Bar and Cube 63. The difference between the phone experiences I had was striking.
Schiller’s had a fancy system that directed you (finally) to a reservation line for three co-owned restaurants. I had to wait…and wait…for someone to pick up. Then repeat the process when I needed to make a change. Not how I like to spend my day.
At the same time, I called Cube 63, a fun little sushi place, asking for a similar reservation. An hour later, they TEXTED ME BACK. For phone-phobics like me, this was a revelation. My friends oohed and ahhed over the text, declaring it “the future.” Behold…
While text reservations seems so very simple, obvious, and EASY, it is obviously still a novelty. Why don’t more restaurants start doing this? (And how about mobile ordering while they’re at it?) I just might go on a steady sushi diet out of shear convenience.
2 responses so far ↓
1 MBTV Episode 2: Talking on Phone // Jan 26, 2009 at 3:17 pm
[...] an open call to action. Restaurants have everything to gain by offering customers the option to text for reservations. What if you could text your doctor if you have a pressing medical question? Gyms could let you [...]
2 Personal Picks: Streaming from SXSW, iPhone 3.0, ReadyPing and Rack Hacks // Mar 20, 2009 at 2:13 pm
[...] application is spot-on. (Sometimes the best ideas are the most obvious.) I raved last month about SMS reservations at Cube 63, which I bet entailed little more than a hostess and a cell phone. Scaling this concept with a [...]