Opportunity: Every American enjoys a meal out at a restaurant sometime during the year, however, often there is a wait on busy nights such as the weekends and holidays. If there were a technology that would allow consumers and restaurants to report on current wait times at restaurants that would prevent customers from showing up and leaving after finding out about the significant wait time.
Solution: The solution that I propose is an app that allows customers and restaurants to post and update real-time wait times for any and all restaurants in a certain area. The app would use your current location to recognize restaurants near you as well as give you the ability to search specific restaurants to inquire on their wait time. By allowing both sides to update the app, this will help to provide the most accurate times because customers could overestimate the time while restaurants would want to underestimate the times. The app could also inform the user if the restaurant provided call ahead seating or reservations in order to avoid a wait time at all. As for the price of the product, it could have a tier system that took into consideration how often you reported wait times in order to reward those that are not only using the app but who are also helping the app. By displaying the different wait times and locations of restaurants on the app, users would quickly be able to access wait times and have a realistic expectation before even leaving the house.
I really like the idea of this app! I typically call for a wait time which even what they say is not right. I do hate waiting for a table when I get to a restaurant because I know that if I'm waiting at a table for thirty minutes I still have to wait another thirty for my food to come out. I think a cool feature you could add to the app is to show any deals going on or specials that may entice them to go there even if they were not planning on before. The only difficult part within this app is getting all of these restaurants that you want in your app on board which would be a complicated process.
ReplyDeleteAndrea, this idea of the application reminds me of a combination of Yelp and Waze put into one. Who better to than to describe the wait times then the customers themselves? We live in the age of technology and if we want a method to check the wait times of other restaurants, this is the way to do it. Hopefully, this will extend internationally instead of just the United States.
ReplyDeleteHey Andie!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great solution to your opportunity. I think it is really beneficial to have both the customers and the restaurants have the ability to update the wait time. I would definitely use this app. I feel like there would also be an opportunity to sell the idea to an application that is already heavily utilized, like Yelp. I think they would pay a lot of money to the domain of an app like this.