Zomato launches table reservations in multiple cities

Zomato, the leading restaurant discovery and food ordering app, has partnered with hundreds of notable restaurants to enable millions of its users to book tables via the Zomato app and website.

Zomato had earlier launched their online ordering services in April 2015 to help simplify food ordering for customers, and has become the go-to app for ordering food online for home delivery.

Zomato’s table booking service is available at restaurants in multiple cities and languages. The feature, which has been seamlessly baked into the main Zomato app, allows users to make, modify, and cancel bookings in 3 simple steps at any given time of the day, even outside of the restaurant's operating hours.

The app also makes bookings stress-free by syncing them with calendars, and sending reminders prior to the booking time.

“We understand that restaurants want – and need – an integrated solution; that’s why we've spent countless hours designing an ecosystem, not just a single app. Zomato Book integrates with our other products to ultimately give restaurant managers a seamless solution for enhanced consumer delight. Hundreds of businesses around the world – ranging from small to 1000+ seat restaurants, and even theme park resorts – are already using Zomato Book.” said, Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO, Zomato

At present, over 500 establishments across 21 cities globally are using Zomato's table management and booking systems, and the number is growing by the day.

Restaurant partners include major multinational brand names such as GQ at the JW Marriott in Dubai and the Kempinski group in Dubai and Ajman, Hard Rock Cafe and The Hilton and The Conrad in Istanbul, Universal Studios Resort in the US, Le Meridien in Gurgaon, The Lalit Hotels across India, as well as local favourites such as Summer House Cafe in Delhi, Arbor Brewing Company in Bangalore, and The Bombay Canteen in Mumbai.

Zomato started work on its table reservations product in April' 15 when it acquired Nextable, a table management and booking platform based in North Carolina, USA. Nextable was rebranded to Zomato Book and integrated into Zomato's app and web products to enable a smooth and seamless table booking experience for customers.

TC DeSilva, Founder of Nextable, and SVP - Zomato Book said “We are so proud to ship Zomato Book to hundreds of restaurants across the world. Working with the Zomato sales team has been a rewarding experience and I am excited to see how far we can go with this amazing product that we have created over the last couple of years.”

Zomato Book, the business product that enables bookings, has been built in collaboration with restaurant owners. Samir Kuckreja (ex-President NRAI, ex-CEO Nirulas) has helped the Zomato team with his valuable insights to help develop a product which has been receiving great feedback from restaurant owners, hosts, managers, and waitstaff.

The most important problem that Zomato Book solves is training – restaurant staff can learn to use the system in a few minutes.

Zomato Book also gives restaurant managers a bird's-eye view of what's going on inside the restaurant in real time, enabling them to maximize their seating capacity, estimate how long it will be until a table frees up, and keep waitlisted customers notified on the availability of tables. This allows them to make their services more effective, and frees up resources that can be spent on creating memorable dining experiences for customers. Restaurants can also access data from a customer’s past visits to their restaurant, helping them personalize their customer's future dining experiences.

Since the soft release of Zomato Book in November, in about a month, restaurants have used the product to seat over 2.5 million guests. This number is set to increase tremendously in the coming months, as Zomato Book becomes a daily operational tool for thousands more restaurants worldwide.

To see and test how Zomato Book operates - find Summer House Cafe in Delhi on the Zomato app and give it a shot. Please make sure that you cancel your reservation after you test it - else, Summer House Cafe will be expecting you to show up and you won't and that's not cool.