Nowait Guest

App that once worked great, now delivers opposite effect. It used to work such that when you arrived at your recommended time, you were just a few minutes away from getting your table. Last few recent uses of the app, a new wait time of 30 minutes began once we arrived and checked-in. Last use was informed around 5:50pm that wait was 23-38 minutes. We got in line on the app and was told to arrive at 6:20 and that 1 party was ahead of us. We arrived at 6:15 and then a new wait if 30 minutes began once we checked in. If we had just driven to the restaurant (10 minutes away) at 5:50 and waited we would’ve easily been seated by 6:30. Using the app, we waited 25 minutes to leave, then was told to wait another 30 by the restaurant once we arrived. The app actually had the opposite effect of making our wait longer than just showing up without it. We walked out of the restaurant and were seated right away at a great place that close by. No app needed.

I downloaded this app and had it in my restaurant for several years. At first it was nice not to have to babysit/guard the pagers however but that quickly changed! The "old" company that owned No Wait (NW) was really nice to work with. You could actually get someone on the phone... imagine that! NW's extremely limited notification text only allows for a very basic message. My restaurants are located in a seasonal/tourist town and we get quite busy during the summer months. Being in a tourist location it requires a bit more detail as to how the reservation process works in order to keep our restaurant running efficiently... this app did NOT allow this much detail. In fact it got MUCH worse once Yelp bought the company. They were obviously more interested in pushing their own service/site then having an app that worked for the restaurants that they were allegedly serving. The outgoing texts could only be around 10 words, compared to their paragraph about their service with a very long link attached! Not sure why I can send a text of any length but only a sentence or two when using there text service... and they are much more expensive then some of their competitors! There are several apps that do what NW does and I would recommend looking at those before signing up for this service! Yelp only looks out to serve themselves!!!

The app is often slow to update. I checked a restaurant and couldn't put my name in because there was "no wait". I looked before walking to the restaurant from my car and got the same thing. I looked at the app in front of the host stand when I came in to get a table and they tell me it's a 20 minute wait. I refreshed the app and it took 10 minutes before a wait actually appeared. Moreover if you have a party of four and all there is left are two tops, you can't put your name on the app because it still shows "come on in". Significant glitches that need to be fixed.