The Creation of restaurantdiary

restaurantdiary was the idea of Mike Conyers, an experienced restaurateur.
Mike identified a need to maximise the revenue achieved from his customers, particularly at times of peak demand. He was also frustrated at the level of commission he had to pay to bookings providers, such as 5pm and Livebookings. He also saw that bookings from such external bookings providers (mainly web-based) required significant effort to integrate into the restaurant booking system (typically based on paper).

Mike looked at existing providers of booking management systems for restaurants, such as Quadranet, Imagic, OpenTable and Livebookings and realised that those systems did not meet the needs that he had identified in his restaurants.

He decided to consider creating a system to meet those needs, with a specific focus on a system which would permit a single point of entry to the diary, from multiple sources, and which would encourage the automatic capture of customer related data in support of future marketing to his restaurant’s customers.
As restaurant owners and operators ourselves, we had used or looked at all the other tools on the market - web booking systems, portal sites and PC-based software. We looked at and used in our restaurants systems from www.5pm.co.uk, Livebookings, Opentable, Imagic, Loghos, Avenista, Efficient Frontiers, Guestbridge and many others. We could simply not find one solution for our operational needs - that's why we started with a clean sheet of paper and created restaurantdiary.

Thus restaurantdiary was born.

However, before entering into the investment required to systemise his revenue and yield management principles, Mike conducted a live experiment in a restaurant he then operated in Glasgow, Scotland. Previously, the best Saturday night covers achieved stood at 166. Mike laid down the booking rules and parameters which were to form the basis of the profit improvement elements of restaurantdiary and ensured that throughout the pilot week these principles were strictly adhered to throughout the booking process via an Excel spreadsheet.
On the Saturday night in question, Mike was fortunate that there was strong early evening demand and that, through judicious use of his "flow management principles", the service went without a hitch, the kitchen was never under pressure and the floor staff actually felt the service had been quieter than normal – though the tips were much better than normal. In reality, the covers achieved were 232 and sales and margin were the best ever, with gross operating profit for the evening improved by 30%.

We do not bring you business, we do not cook the food, we do not operate front of house but we, at restaurantdiary, are so sure of our system that we guarantee a profit improvement element to all our customers.