Taste Budd’s Cafe, a cherished community favorite in Red Hook, NY since 2000, beautifully combines cozy charm, great food, and modern convenience. From humble beginnings as a mobile business, they’ve grown into a beloved cafe serving almost 500 guests daily, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Overview
How Taste Budd’s Thrives in Red Hook, NY
Taste Budd’s Cafe, a cherished community favorite in Red Hook, NY since 2000, beautifully combines cozy charm, great food, and modern convenience. From humble beginnings as a mobile business, they’ve grown into a beloved cafe serving almost 500 guests daily, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Renowned for their pastries, sandwiches, salads, and live weekend music, Taste Budd’s is always evolving to enhance their guests' experience. Their tech-forward approach provides easy, efficient ordering while maintaining the warm, inviting atmosphere of a small-town cafe, allowing them to compete successfully with franchised and multi-unit drive-throughs.
Situation
Taste Budd’s Search for a Flexible, Modern Solution
As Taste Budd’s grew, they found that their previous system could no longer keep up with their evolving needs. The cafe needed a solution that allowed more flexibility in menu management—especially to accommodate different dietary preferences like vegan options—and more modern tools for handling online orders and delivery. They also sought better ways to manage high-volume service, from in-cafe interactions to takeout and delivery. Critical to their future success was a system that could support delivery zones, custom promotions, and offer seamless communication between front-of-house and kitchen staff.
Solution
Infinite Flexibility with GoTab
GoTab proved to be the ideal platform to elevate Taste Budd's operations. With its integration of QR codes, online ordering, Point Of Sale (POS)Handheld POS, and a powerful Kitchen Display System (KDS), Taste Budd’s improved both customer service and internal workflows. They now manage high-volume orders with ease, relying on GoTab’s KDS to streamline expo operations and ensure accurate, timely order fulfillment.
“From streamlining online orders to offering custom delivery zones, the technology has given us the flexibility to serve our community better and more efficiently." – Dan Budd, Owner of Taste Budd’s Cafe.
In addition, the cafe uses GoTab’s flexible rules engine to set up unique workflows, schedules and delivery areas, such as drop zones at local colleges, with specific discounts for students and faculty. Group orders are supported with tailored delivery schedules and minimal fees, which helps make their service more accessible and efficient. Taste Budd's also leverages GoTab’s powerful promotional features, allowing customers to apply discounts automatically through links or QR codes—no manual entry required. This ease of use has led to highly successful promotions, while GoTab’s ability to track marketing ROI has been a game-changer for measuring the impact of their campaigns.
Finally, with integrations like MarginEdge for inventory and costing, along with Shipday for in-house delivery, Taste Budd’s can seamlessly manage every aspect of their operations, ensuring their focus remains on delivering exceptional food and service to their community.
As Taste Budd’s continues to innovate, GoTab’s solutions will be integral in supporting their commitment to delivering an exceptional guest experience, ensuring that the cafe remains a beloved destination for years to come.
Tap Room Playbook Episode 2:
When you really think about it, with everything managers need to do in a tap room, the hospitality aspect is often overlooked.
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.
.webp)
