Full service · Fast casual · Family
Turn the table a little faster. Own the order. Get your Sunday night back.
A restaurant grows at the table and in the kitchen, not in the back office. Shorter ticket times, servers who sell instead of walking to a terminal, and regulars who order from you instead of an app. The POS and the processing are the floor. We fix that on the way up.
Fifteen minutes with Brian, between lunch close and dinner prep. No deck.
What we look at together
- Where a table loses minutes between sitting down and paying, and which minutes are yours to get back.
- How much of your online volume runs through someone else's app, and how much of it is repeat guests.
- Whether your menu asks for the second thing, or leaves it to whoever is on shift.
- How many hours a week you spend on reports and schedules that a system should be doing.
Sound familiar?
Full dining room, long ticket times, and the margin went to an app.
“My servers spend more time at the terminal than at the table.”
Every walk to the station is a table not checked on and a dessert not offered. The guest waits, the kitchen gets the order late, and the turn stretches by minutes you never see on a report.
“The delivery apps bring me orders and take a cut I would rather keep.”
Fine for a stranger. Painful when it is the family that orders from you every Thursday. That guest is yours. The app is charging you to borrow them.
“Saturday we turned people away and then had three no-shows.”
A reservation with no confirmation and nothing on file is a hope, not a booking. The empty table costs you twice: the covers you lost and the walk-ins you sent down the street.
“I do the reports at midnight because nobody else can.”
Sales by item, labor against sales, what moved and what sat. If it takes an hour at the end of the night, you do not look at it often enough to act on it. Those are your hours.
What changes
Four levers from the table to the pass
Each of these is a change in how a shift runs, not a feature on a brochure. Each one adds guests, adds to the ticket, or gives you hours back. The right system makes them easy. If yours already does them well, keep it.
Order at the table, fire to the station
The server takes the order on a handheld and it is on the kitchen display before they leave the table, routed to the right station with a timer the pass can see. The kitchen starts sooner, the server stays in the dining room, and the turn gets shorter without anyone rushing the guest.
Online ordering you own
Your menu, your site, your guest's name and number. Orders land in the same kitchen flow as the dining room. Keep the apps for new faces if you want. Move the regulars to you, and stop paying a cut on people who were already coming back.
A menu that asks for the second thing
Modifiers that prompt the add-on, sides and pairings that appear when they should, and a layout built around what you actually sell and what makes you money. The upsell happens because the system asks, not because the new server remembered.
Reservations that show up
Confirmations by text, a card on file or deposit for the nights that need it, and a waitlist that texts the guest instead of handing them a pager. Fewer empty tables you held, and a guest list that grows every time someone books.
From the floor, not the brochure
Owners who have been through it
Real venues, real systems, the good and the bad. We do not publish quotes we cannot stand behind.
“We ditched Toast after seeing Brian’s comparison, and we could not be happier with SmartTab. Setup was fast, and support has been 100% better.”
“The only person I’ve seen actually explain the differences in plain English.”
How the call works
Three steps. You get the list either way.
1
Tell him what you run
The form below asks what system you are on, what kind of restaurant, and your number. One minute. He reads it before he calls.
2
Fifteen minutes about your floor
Turns, ticket times, where your online orders come from, what your reports take out of your week. Ask anything, including whether to stay on what you have.
3
Two or three things, in writing
Specific to your restaurant, worth doing this month. If one involves us, he says what it costs. If none do, you still have the list and nobody calls you every week.
Tell Brian about your restaurant
What you run, how many seats, and your number. He calls back within one business day.
What restaurant owners ask first
What does this cost?
It depends on how many stations you run, whether you need handhelds and a kitchen display, and whether processing is part of the conversation. Brian gives you a real number on the call, all in, with the monthly software line spelled out. The call is free and the list you leave with is yours either way.
Am I signing a long contract?
Nothing for the call, and nothing to work with us on a plan. If a system or processing agreement has a term, you see it in writing before you decide, and Brian tells you plainly what it costs to leave. If a term does not sit right, say so and he will tell you the alternative.
How bad is switching? I cannot lose a weekend.
You should not have to. Your menu, modifiers, and kitchen routing get built and checked before anything is installed. The swap lands on your slowest day, staff train before their first shift on it, and someone is reachable that first night. The goal is you close one service on the old system and open the next on the new one.
I am fine with what I have.
Then keep it. Most of what grows a restaurant is turns, ticket times, and whether your repeat guests order from you or from an app. If your system handles ordering at the table, routes tickets to the right station, and gives you your own online ordering, you are in good shape. Toast does a lot of this well, and plenty of owners should stay on it. The call tells you where you stand in fifteen minutes.
Do I have to drop the third-party delivery apps?
No. They are useful for reach, especially for guests who have never heard of you. The problem is when your regulars order through them too, and you pay a cut on a guest you already earned. The move is to give those guests an easier way to order from you directly and keep the apps for the new ones. Both can run at once.
The next Saturday is coming. Make the tables turn and the orders yours.
Fifteen minutes about your floor, your kitchen, and what it all costs to run. Two or three things worth doing this month.