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Innovators

American's Small Business Customer Spotlight

May 2012 | BuzzTable

Buzztable

BuzzTable Saves Dinner

Imagine it's dinnertime and you're trying to choose a restaurant. At that very moment, the manager of a nearby eatery decides she wants to showcase a new entree. In an instant, your smartphone alerts you with a special offer from the restaurant. Dinner is solved, but you arrive to find there's an hour wait for a table. Instead of waiting in a crowded entryway listening for your name to be called you run errands nearby. When your table is ready, the same app that delivered dinner savings hours earlier, buzzes your phone. Now stop imagining and read on to learn how BuzzTable's web-based platform and smartphone app makes this a reality!

Give us the rundown, what is BuzzTable?

BuzzTable:   Guests of participating restaurants can download the free BuzzTable app, add individual venues to their digital wallet, and then get access to custom rewards and benefits. These exclusive rewards are hand-selected by each restaurant for their most loyal customers. We also give guests the ability to discover top recommended dishes, view photos of menu items, and provide private messages to the restaurant.

We also have a tablet-optimized app that allows restaurants to text their guests when tables become available. This works with all phones that accept SMS, but if you've downloaded the BuzzTable consumer app, guests get extra information on their position in line.

As we like to say, we are freeing guests from wait times and rewarding them for eating the food they love!

How did you come up with the concept for your business?

W. Siebert:   A couple of summers ago, the four of us went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in New York's East Village. We were placed on a waiting list and asked to stand outside on a sweltering August night. We asked if they could take our phone number and call us when our table was ready, but they said, "no." So, we walked away and ended up at a less crowded, but less enjoyable restaurant a few blocks away… and that's when we had our "we should build an app for that" moment. We immediately started brainstorming and quickly realized that "texting people when their table is ready" was just the tip of the iceberg. We witnessed a breakdown in the relationship between restaurants and their guests due to technology and the emergence of group discount deals. BuzzTable set out to create a technology that brought the restaurant and their guests closer together than ever before.

Tell us about the BuzzTable team.

W. Siebert:   BuzzTable was founded by four-friends-turned-business-partners. Mike Cerrone, John Williams, and I were all co-founders of a previous company, which was a marketing firm that worked with early stage technology companies. John Brennan was the co-founder of his own start-up, a visualization software for non-profit companies. We ended up partnering on a couple of projects together in 2010, and when the idea for BuzzTable popped up, we all decided to shift our focus there full-time.

Prior to our lives as full-time entrepreneurs, John Williams and I worked as sales and marketing executives at Clear Channel Communications and Hearst Broadcasting, Mike Cerrone was a financial analyst at LPL Financial, and John Brennan was a developer at Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Defense.

What is the advantage for customers to use BuzzTable?

BuzzTable:   For the guests of restaurants, BuzzTable is the home of your favorite restaurants. Our app allows you to stay "in the know" at the restaurants of your choosing and earn exclusive rewards at the restaurants you love.

For the restaurateur, BuzzTable helps you stay in touch and show your appreciation to your guests. We create a unique, personal, and rewarding mobile experience for your guests that will lead to happier customers and increased retention.

How do you attract new customers?

BuzzTable:   So far, we've had a controlled roll-out and partnered with specific restaurants in NYC. We currently have a waiting list of restaurants that would like to be added into our platform. The response we've been getting has been tremendous and we've been relying heavily on just word-of-mouth.

Where is your smartphone app available? Where can it be used?

BuzzTable:   BuzzTable's free consumer app is available in the Android Market and App Store. It will initially work at select restaurants around New York City.

Our goal is to be available in as many cities across the United States as possible. We hope everyone can enjoy the benefits of BuzzTable soon!

Click for larger images.

Where can restaurants learn more about your web-based platform?

BuzzTable's Wait List System for restaurant hosts can be remotely downloaded by contacting us.

What is your biggest struggle as a startup?

BuzzTable:   Wearing multiple-hats every day and working 24/7.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone wanting to start a new business?

BuzzTable:   Have no fear and no hesitations. You need to have complete confidence in yourself. There will be points when you want to quit, but you have to stay positive and learn from your mistakes (because you'll make plenty of them).

What are your goals for BuzzTable over the next year? Where do you see yourselves in five years?

BuzzTable:   Our goals for the next year are to continue to grow within the New York City market and then expanding to other major cities. In five years, we hope to be in thousands of restaurants throughout the entire United States.

Learn more about BuzzTable at BuzzTable.com

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