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GoTab Helps All Restaurant Concepts Scale to Demand & Thrive

From casual and fine dining restaurants to food counters, ghost kitchens and all-day cafés

With operators relying on its restaurant commerce platform across 35 states, GoTab is helping all types of restaurants thrive by allowing them to scale their operations based on demand. Designed to adapt to any concepts, from casual and fine dining restaurants, food counters, all-day cafés to ghost kitchen operations, GoTab is the perfect cloud-based POS to provide a tailored guest experience, and allow operators to run lean, and profitable operations.

As more Americans get vaccinated, we’re seeing pent-up demand for restaurant and brewery experiences, and historically tight labor markets. GoTab offers an app-less, QR-based ordering solution that is efficient, easy to use, and allows them to scale based on demand.

Tim McLaughlin, CEO of GoTab

Re-Opening with Hospitality, Easing Labor Woes

As cities gradually lift dine-in restrictions, and guests sustain their takeout/delivery habits and seek out dine-in experiences, restaurants are seeing increased demand across all their channels. At D.C.-based Black Restaurant Group’s concepts Pearl Dive Oyster Palace and BlackSalt Fish Market and Restaurant, robust takeout business is now complemented by a high number of dine-in customers. With a historically tight labor market, they have been able to serve more guests with fewer staff in the restaurants that are using GoTab's restaurant POS for table service. “With GoTab, the experience is interactive. Guests can browse the menu with enticing imagery and order directly from their mobile phone,” said Jon Linck, Partner and Director of Operations at Black Restaurant Group. “People are coming out more and getting more comfortable. They’re looking for hospitality, good service, good food, the whole package. GoTab allows us to deliver,” he added.

More Table Turnover, Higher Food Sales

For Maketto, GoTab QR codes empower guests to order directly from their mobile phones through the spacious indoor and outdoor seating areas. For the staff, this means making different menus available at different times, along with specials and promotions. “We really love the flexibility of programming we get with GoTab,” said Director of Sales Keem Hughley. “Menus can be updated in real-time and the platform is very intuitive for our staff to use.” Using GoTab has allowed the team to speed up service and increase table turnover, particularly in the evenings. Dinner service now sees 3 different turns of table, and F&B sales have also increased significantly. “This past month (April 2021), we have reached the same sales volume levels as pre-pandemic times in 2019,” said Hughley. “And we’ve done this with 60% less FOH staff than in 2019,” he added.

"People are coming out more and getting more comfortable. They’re looking for hospitality, good service, good food, the whole package. GoTab allows us to deliver."

John Linck, Director of Operations Black Restaurant Group

Finding Success & Expansion Opportunities

An early adopter of GoTab’s contactless ordering and payment features, modern cantina Espita was able to find success during the pandemic. Using GoTab for dine-in, takeout and delivery, they implemented a hybrid service model that eliminated ordering and paying through a server, leading to a simplified dining experience and higher guest satisfaction. “Guests place the orders. The orders come out. It’s that simple. And guests love it,” said Destination Unknown Restaurants GM Josh Phillips. “We get compliments constantly. The amount of repeat business is outrageous at this point… At least five or six times a night I get people coming up to me after their meal and telling me how much of a better dining experience they’re having thanks to GoTab. We’ve also been able to shave off 30 minutes per table.” 

The pandemic didn’t stop Destination Unknown Restaurants’s expansion plans: new GoTab-centric concepts opened in 2020 and 2021, including Ghostburger - a ghost kitchen operation housed within Espita (for now) - and Las Gemelas, a fast casual Taqueria paired with the sit-down restaurant Cocina Mexicana. “With less staff needed to operate and serve guests at our restaurants, we have been able to open new concepts and curtail the current labor shortages,” said Las Gemelas General Manager Kelly Phillips.  Las Gemelas was the first restaurant to receive a grant from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, providing them the opportunity to give some of the team raises, pay off some of the debt it took to open the restaurant, and further expand the outdoor offerings. “Without GoTab, we wouldn’t have been able to expand our businesses during the pandemic,” she added.

"This past month (April 2021), we have reached the same sales volume levels as pre-pandemic times in 2019. And we’ve done this with 60% less FOH staff than in 2019."

Keem Hughley, Director of Sales at Maketto

About GoTab, Inc.

GoTab, Inc., a Restaurant Commerce Platform (RCP), is helping large- and mid-sized restaurants, breweries, bars, hotels and other venues run lean, profitable operations while making guests even more satisfied. It integrates with popular point-of-sale (POS) systems and allows patrons to order and pay through a server, order and pay directly from their own mobile phones, or blend the two experiences all on one tab, through its easy-to-use mobile POS, contactless ordering and payment features, and kitchen management systems (KMS). The guest never has to download a mobile app or create a password. Operators get flexible features that can be rapidly applied to access new revenue streams via dine-in, take-out and delivery, ghost kitchens, retail groceries, and more. Founded in 2016, GoTab processes over $250M transactions per year with operations across 35 U.S. states and growing. For more information, consult our media kit, request a demo here or learn more at https://gotab.io/en.

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Situated “in the heart of it all, yet tranquil enough to make you feel away from it all too,” The Limelight Hotel Snowmass offers 99 hotel rooms and 11 residences, as well as footsteps-to-gondola access in winter and summer — right in the middle of Snowmass Base Village.

The Situation

Especially over the last few years, the Limelight Hotels IT team had witnessed a significant shift to contactless technology in the hospitality industry. After evaluating friction points in the guest journey, aligning with modern technology platforms in their restaurant was determined to be an effective way to offer elevated contactless dining experiences to their guests while also evolving their technology platforms to continue to support long-term company goals. Limelight Hotel partnered with GoTab to provide an enhanced on-demand dining experience on par with the brand’s reputation for exceptional guest service.

The Solution

Reducing Staff Touch Points Without Sacrificing Guest Experience

Guests are now able to begin a tab from their room or the property’s restaurant by scanning a QR code, texting a link to friends or family members on the ski slope to add in their orders, then meeting up together at the patio or lodge to enjoy their meal and après ski festivities without interruption. By streamlining tasks like inputting orders and processing payments, this eliminates friction for hotel staff and allows them to focus on delivering renowned guest service for a memorable experience. Since partnering with GoTab, Limelight Snowmass has consistently seen higher check averages and sales.

“We found the Point of Sale platforms we were looking at offered the guest and staff limited opportunities to further reduce touch points or improve the traditional restaurant experience. The GoTab platform enabled the guest to take an active role over the flow of their experience while simultaneously reducing touch points and further streamlining restaurant operations.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

According to the Limelight Hotels team, some of the other platforms that were evaluated were either missing some of the pieces they were looking for, had weak customer support models, or had little willingness to develop integrations to existing hotel platforms already in place. To that end, GoTab integrated with cloud-based platform, Infor. Together, GoTab and Infor are providing dynamic solutions to support central, efficient service across hotel amenities and deliver exceptional guest experiences.

“Previously, guests would call down to the restaurant to begin an order from their room or while they were out enjoying the ski slopes. Using GoTab, guests can now place orders from anywhere on the resort, giving them the on-demand service they want without interrupting their day. GoTab empowers us to give control to the guest, reducing touch points and streamlining overall restaurant operations, making Limelight Hotel the resort of choice for Snowmass.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

Since introducing GoTab, The Limelight Hotel has seen a consistent level of upsells and items sold per check resulting in additional revenue capture. They have been able to maintain service levels in their restaurants during periods when there was reduced staffing available without significantly diminishing the guest experience.

The Benefits

Eliminate Phone Orders – Take Orders from the Slopes. Guests can start a tab from their room or on the mountain without interrupting the flow of their day.

Future-Proofed Technologies – Delivering elevated contactless ordering via integration with the Infor hotel management platform.

Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

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