The True Cost of a Paper Diary
40 reasons your paper diary is costing you £000's every week
| Reason | Effect |
| Handwriting issues | Inefficient |
| Partial data taken | Inefficient |
| Where's the Diary! Who had it last? | Inefficient |
| Deposits are a nightmare! Staple receipts to diary page! | Inefficient |
| Spills and smudges | Inefficient |
| Only able to take the booking within the bar/restaurant | Inefficient |
| No-shows not checked until end of service | Inefficient |
| Where's my pen!!!! | Inefficient |
| Lost/Stolen diary! | Inefficient |
| Overstaffed or understaffed due to inaccuracies, mistakes and no-shows. | Inefficient |
| Rely on 3rd parties for Reviews, such as TripAdvisor | Inefficient |
| Save space on the bar! | Inefficient |
| Mistakes are not accountable to anyone unless you know your own handwriting | Inefficient |
| Defcon 5 mode in the event of a fire all information is lost and unable to notify people. | Inefficient |
| Mis-spelled names/emails and incorrect digits on phone numbers | Inefficient |
| Training new staff is not easy as there are usually styles or quirks, even codes and shorthand they need to learn | Inefficient |
| FoH staff are generally younger and find paper diaries quite alien! | Inefficient |
| The only way to confirm a booking is to call the customer | Inefficient |
| No back up. If something goes wrong all is lost forever | Inefficient |
| Paper diaries can not integrate with any other tools in the restaurant | Inefficient |
| Site specific - If you run more than one site you can not see how busy others are without being there | Inefficient |
| Finding a specific historic customer is impossible searching a diary | Inefficient |
| Answering a call and filling in a diary is time lost and can never be recovered | Inefficient |
| Loss of potential covers | Lost revenue |
| Increase of No-Shows as no verification or commitment from the customer | Lost revenue |
| Lots of entries of small tables can lead you to believe you are full and stop taking bookings | Lost revenue |
| Forget to update with cancellations | Lost revenue |
| Missed phone calls (currently over 50% of phone calls into pubs go unanswered) Revenue lost forever! | Lost revenue |
| No Database for email campaigns | Lost revenue |
| Naughty staff not allowing late or early bookings....? | Lost revenue |
| Higher no show rates leading to food wastage | Lost revenue |
| Loyalty, profiling customers is based purely on remembering how often they come and you being on shift. | Lost revenue |
| Unable to co-ordiante the turning of tables efficiently | Optimisation |
| Forget to write bookings in | Optimisation |
| Walk-ins rarely entered into the diary when busy | Optimisation |
| No table management. Waiters accidentally putting people in tables reserved for later. | Optimisation |
| Staff can sometimes use the wrong page. | Optimisation |
| No room to add detailed notes or special requests | Optimisation |
| Inaccurate data and reporting of covers served | Optimisation |
| Cause delays for walk ins as someone needs to check the diary page thoroughly as bookings can be written anywhere on the page for any time slot! | Optimisation |
There is revenue to be made - Join us to make the difference to your business!
Case Study-Hare & Hounds Surrey
When I took over the pub restaurant it was using a paper diary and trading at around the £500k p.a. mark. One of my immediate observations was that the pub was struggling to attract new customers even though the current customers spent well when they were there and rated us very highly. The conclusion was that we had a good operator in place but no knowledge of sales or marketing. My only change was to switch from the paper diary to a digital diary. The reasons for this were based on these particular issues and processes I recognised:
•Calls not being answered or taking staff away from service when they were
•No-shows!!
•Declining bookings when the diary implied we were full
•No database to market events, menus or seasonal offers to.
The outcome was that we generated an extra £1-2000 in weekly revenue. The main benefit was that our phone calls dropped by over 90% and we were able to focus more on service and ensuring our new customers had a great experience.
Eric Payet
Using Paper Diary
I switched to Online bookings and instantly benefitted from less phone calls disrupting service and converting ‘would be’ missed calls into bookings.
My covers per sitting have increased due to optimising the floor and having a clear picture of table availability
Revenues have increased on the back of more covers and also less no-shows due to the commitment of online booking and reminders.
Using Online Diary
I already understood the benefits of an online diary and optimising the floor for each service and KuulSeats delivers this with some enriched features.
By having a presence on the KuulSeats app we are now seeing new faces in the restaurant and an increase in number of covers.
This solution is costing me less than my previous and KuulSeats are not charging me booking fees which put me off using some of the other booking apps.
Using Booking Apps
I already understand the benefits of online booking, digital diaries and also the benefit of utilising a market of existing app users seeking dining experiences.
That said, the fees involved each month were eating heavily into my already small net profits.
KuulSeats has allowed me the same solution but access to a new community at no extra cost. I can also transition from the other service as KuulSeats share grows.