How Taste of Texas got 40% more guests with Yelp Guest Manager

Skip the article and turn takeaways into action by scheduling a call with our team.

Taste of Texas manager Donnell McAllister has some valuable words of wisdom for any restaurateur: “The most expensive part of any restaurant is an empty seat. So, doing whatever you can to get that guest in the seat and then get them coming back is absolutely vital.”

He’s dead right—restaurants with high occupancy and returning customers are the ones that make it in the industry. But getting there is no easy feat. It requires consistency, performance, and all the latest tools to stay current.

For reference, Taste of Texas is the number one independently owned restaurant in the state of Texas by volume, and 13th in the USA. They serve on average 7,500 to 8,000 guests per week with over $30 million in revenue in 2023. Doing those kinds of numbers is an impressive feat in any sense, but especially given the antiquated systems Taste of Texas formerly used.

“We were using pen and paper, and we kind of reached the limitations on what we could do as far as how many people we could take care of in the hours we were open,” said McAllister. “For us to be able to grow, we were going to have to do something different.”

Having begun in 1977 and since grown to be one of the most popular restaurants in Houston as well as a bonafide Texas history museum, Taste of Texas has a pedigree that ties it to the past. But the restaurant’s processes couldn’t remain in the past, and jumping into the future meant big changes.

Switching to Yelp Guest Manager

Switching from pen and paper to a full front-of-house software suite is like going from driving a clunker to a race car—you’ll notice the performance difference as soon as you turn it on and step on the accelerator.

“Comparing what we do now to back then, it’s night and day,” McAllister told us. “We are able to keep the restaurant fuller longer. We’ve seen a 40% increase in guest count overall, and as we go through the week, 70-80% of every guest walking through the door is walking in because they joined either the Waitlist or got a reservation through Guest Manager.”

Let’s take a step back for a second. Just what is Yelp Guest Manager and what can it do?

Efficiency front and center

Manually managing waitlists and reservations can be a real drag, as well as super inefficient. It can lead to crossed wires and bottlenecks, leading to long wait times and dissatisfied customers.

Yelp Guest Manager eliminates all of that hassle by automating reservations and waitlists—customers sign up on the Yelp app and the rest is done automatically by the software. Guest Manager updates the reservation list and provides wait times at up to 96% accuracy*. Taste of Texas was pleased to find out just how efficient the reservation system is.

Combine that with a full-service FOH system that provides analytics and has a massive reach and you give your restaurant a chance to crow about well-earned success.

Effects of automated waitlists and reservations

Getting things automated with new tech can make an immediate impact.

“When we started the Yelp Waitlist,” said McAllister, “it immediately allowed us to better respect our guests’ time to where they could join the waitlist before they even left home. They could see what the wait times were so they could plan how busy we were around their schedules.”

The effects of this were quite clear, and led to an increase in returning guests—the lifeblood of any restaurant.

“Guests that we hadn’t seen in a long time started coming back because they could just sign in from home and show up when the app told them to and go right to the table,” McAllister shared.

Reservations via Yelp are now easier than ever thanks to Booking Links. These unique links generated by Guest Manager allow restaurants to share links via social media platforms, which then lead directly to your Yelp reservation page. This service comes at no extra cost for Guest Manager users, and can significantly bolster your online reach and get more tables filled.

Guest Manager also has a stellar track record of customers actually showing up: Yelp Guest Manager customers have average no-show rates below 10%.**

Saving time for staff and customers

One of the main goals of Yelp Guest Manager is ensuring everything runs smoothly. Learning how to use the systems is a cinch for anyone—everyone from Grandma to your servers and staff can figure it out.

As McAllister reports, “It’s a very intuitive system to use. It doesn’t require any sort of training with your guests.”

It also doesn’t stack up labor costs in either staffing and training.

“There’s no labor costs as far as taking a phone call and walking people through it. We found that almost 90% of all our reservations are taken with zero interaction from us. It doesn’t cost us a second of our time.”

Imagine being able to free up your staff from the busywork of taking and organizing customers’ reservations the old fashioned way: How much of their time could be freed up to provide better customer service?

Impressive scalability

Guest Manager can scale to any restaurant size and is customizable to allow optimal seating arrangements and times.

If you want a clear example of just how big it can go, listen to how McAllister described a large service:

“There was a Christmas Eve where I had 381 tables on our list in a restaurant that has about 80 tables and we’re quoting still a three to four hour wait time. Guest Manager did it without a single hiccup,” he said. “We’ve been incredibly impressed with the scalability of Yelp Guest Manager and what it can do.”

While history museums are great, McAllister has no intention to go backwards in time.

“I really could not see going backwards to doing what we were doing before, especially with the level of business that we’re able to do now.”

An easy choice

Restaurateurs have options when it comes to FOH and reservation management software. However, when it comes to bang for the buck and simplicity, Yelp Guest Manager wins the day. Its flat rate combined with all the bells and whistles right out the gate means easy choices for already-busy restaurateurs.

New Guest Manager customers are paired with a dedicated onboarding manager for the entire onboarding process—a real live human being who answers the phone, knows your name, and can help you with any snags you encounter.

So, if you found Taste of Texas’ story uplifting, like we did, you may be curious to see what Guest Manager is all about. Reach out to us for a free demo—we’d love to show you around. When you’ve got the top restaurant in Texas singing your praises, it feels pretty good.