A few questions about Tripleseat

I was recently interviewed about Tripleseat and they asked some great questions so I thought I put them here for all to enjoy.

You have recently developed a new Event Planning Software for the Restaurant Industry called Tripleseat. Can you tell me about it and how it helps restaurant event planners?

Tripleseat is a Sales and Event Management web application designed specifically for restaurants to help increase event sales and streamline the planning process. With Tripleseat restaurant event managers can capture, book, and plan more private party business quickly and easily.

How did you think to create this software?

I spent 15 years in the hospitality business before I left to work in software. In late 2008, I had a what could be described as a failed event at a restaurant in Chicago. When I inquired to why things went so bad after spending weeks planning the event I was informed that the restaurant event manager lost all the paperwork a few days before the event. I was surprised to find out that restaurants are still using a manual process. I did some research and what I learned is that most restaurants use some type of manual process – email, Word, Excel, notebooks, folders, post-it notes, and wall calendars. When I asked why, the response was that there was no cost effective, easy to use, software built for the restaurant business.  I decided to fix that problem with Tripleseat.

How does Tripleseat help the restaurant industry, particularly the private dining sector?

Tripleseat fixes two very big problems. The first is capturing leads and developing new business. With Tripleseat restaurants can capture leads directly from their website with our SmartLead landing page, from their Facebook page with our Facebook integration, and from our own lead generation site PrivateDining.in. The second problem we fix is the booking and planning process. Because most restaurant event planners “reap what they sow,” we make booking and planning the events a snap. Tripleseat is a web application that can be used anywhere, even on an iPad, and we help the streamline a multi-step, complicated process to just a few clicks. This increase in productivity means restaurants can book more events, grow the business and never fall behind because of a broken tedious process.

What are common mistakes you see in this part of restaurants? Technologies constantly need to be updated to stay on the forefront, how do you see Tripleseat adapting to changes in the future?

The most common mistake I see is restaurant event managers taking too long to get back to prospects after receiving a lead. The “first one in, wins” and if you don’t respond to a lead quickly someone else will. We deliver leads via e-mail and directly into Tripleseat. We want to make sure our customers are the “first ones in”. As far as keeping Tripleseat fresh we are constantly updating the application. We recently added the Facebook app and have developed integration to popular applications like ConstantContact, Google, Outlook, and iCal.