Tripleseat Release: Banquet Event Orders

The beta launch of Tripleseat is off to a flying start. We had so many restaurants interested in the beta program that we had to stop after just two weeks. We want to keep the number of beta customers to a reasonable number so we could manage the experience and the flow of information.

One item that has taken on a life of its own is the Banquet Event Order or BEO. Our original idea of the BEO was to keep it as simple as possible. The 4 W’s (Who, What, Where,When) was automatically imported into the BEO from the Booking details, so the only thing left to do was add the event details.  Adding the details was simple and straight forward, just cut and paste or type the detail on it’s own field. Easy right? Well not so fast.

The users were loving the BEO they created and wanted to use them over and over again without typing it more than once.  To accommodate this “cut and paste and copy” approach we created  the  BEO template. Now users can create a BEO, turn it into a template, and for any new booking  the template can be selected and  whammo the entire BEO with all the details is created. Two clicks-done.  But wait there is more…

What if a user wanted to add a new line item to an existing BEO template? How do you put that new line item in the right order on the BEO itself? Interesting problem. So what did we do? We put in the ability to create as many new line items you want, edit existing line items, and (this is best part) the ability to drag and drop line items into any order you want.  Once you have the BEO just the way you want it, you guessed it, you can save it as a new template to be used over and over again. Two clicks, BEO done, move on with your life. Nice.