Walking into a restaurant when you’re so hungry that you could eat your arm, only to have the hostess give you a 45-minute wait time can be incredibly frustrating. However, a new mobile application, NoWait, is attempting to fix that problem. According to techcrunch.com:
“The Pittsburgh-based mobile waitlisting service for restaurants, NoWait, which raised $2 million in Series A funding just over a year ago, is now rolling out its first consumer-facing product with the launch of its iOS app for restaurant goers. The new app shows a list of nearby restaurants, wait times and distances, and lets you join the waiting list from your phone.
“The ability to virtually ‘get in line’ ahead of your arrival works also for some restaurants that don’t offer online reservations, such as through OpenTable, for example. The NoWait consumer app lets you browse through its supported restaurants, see how busy they are, and enter in your party size to grab your spot.”
NoWait is in its initial stages and will launch only in the Pittsburgh area, but the company expects to be nationwide by the start of next year. NoWait seeks to be more than just a way to sign in, they want to replace and improve the entire seating process. As also noted by techcrunch.com:
“NoWait’s value proposition goes beyond just replacing the ‘hockey puck’ buzzer system restaurants favor today. Instead, it’s about not only bringing seating management to mobile, but also providing business owners with more analytics and data about how the restaurant is running, even when they’re not able to be physically present in each location.”
If NoWait is able to scale their product, hopefully waiting will be a thing of the past.
