We cut down on phone calls during busy hours and increased reservations by 30%. A setup that gives peace of mind to both customers and the shop. (Cafe L’eau)

— Please tell us about your restaurant.
I had been the head chef at “GARDENHOUSE Kamakura” for many years, but when I started thinking about going independent, I decided to open my own place in Oiso, where I’ve lived for about 20 years, in August 2022. The restaurant is on the second floor of a building located right in front of Oiso Beach, and since I love surfing, I feel I was really lucky to find a spot in such a perfect location. Inside, it’s a bright, open, single-floor space.

For our lunch menu, we aim to offer appealing yet carefully crafted dishes—such as Asian cuisine, curries, ramen, and pasta—that anyone can casually enjoy, from children to seniors.

At night, the atmosphere changes as we dim the lights a little and serve ham made with Okinawan pork, French and Italian cheeses, freshly sliced house-made ham and pasta, along with delicious natural wines and craft beers. It has a mature, grown-up vibe where you can enjoy drinks and small plates like at a bar.

--- Please tell us why you decided to introduce the Respo reservation ledger.
Originally, we took reservations by phone and managed them on paper, but we often got calls during busy cooking hours, so we wanted to reduce the time spent handling phone calls. When the phone rings while I’m boiling pasta, sometimes I can’t answer, and even if I do manage to pick up, I’m so pressed for time that my response ends up being rather curt. Since phone interactions are the first point of contact before customers visit the restaurant, that’s not good for them or for us. We wanted to avoid missing any reservations and make it possible for customers to book at any time they like.

While we were looking into online reservation services, we came across the Respo reservation ledger offered by AutoReserve and decided to implement it. The other services we initially considered had relatively high monthly fees, so the biggest attraction of the Respo reservation ledger was that we could use it for free.

— After implementation, were you able to use it smoothly?
I think anyone who normally uses a computer or tablet to some extent will have no issues at all. Even when there was something I didn’t understand, the customer service staff responded politely, and since they also offer phone support, I hardly had any trouble.

—In July 2023, about 80% of all reservations came through the Respo reservation ledger. How are you making use of the online reservation page?
We make sure to always place the reservation link to our AutoReserve restaurant page on our Instagram profile and on other restaurant listing sites. The people who click through from our Instagram profile to make a reservation are mainly smartphone users in their 20s to 60s, so it’s a pretty wide range of customers.

— After introducing the Respo reservation ledger, what kind of changes have you seen?
First, in terms of operations, we no longer need to assign staff to handle phone calls, so we’ve been able to cut personnel costs by the equivalent of 0.5 of a staff member. Also, with online reservations, the history remains on both smartphones and computers, which helps us avoid mistakes with reservation dates and times, and that has been extremely helpful.

From the customer’s perspective, they can now make reservations whenever they like, even outside business hours, and as a result the number of bookings has increased by 30%. Situations like “I came without a reservation and the restaurant happened to be closed” can also be avoided as long as they book through AutoReserve’s restaurant page, so it gives peace of mind both to our customers and to the restaurant.

There was a time when a customer told me, “I’ll come to your restaurant this coming Tuesday,” but when it’s said out loud, depending on what day of the week they say it, it can be unclear whether they mean “the day after tomorrow’s Tuesday or the Tuesday after that,” and our understanding can get out of sync. But if they look at the restaurant page on AutoReserve, customers can check for themselves whether they can make a reservation, and when I suddenly need to close the restaurant temporarily due to something like feeling unwell, I can easily change the settings on my smartphone or tablet, so it’s immediately obvious to customers which days are available for reservations and which aren’t.

So when we get inquiries about business through personal LINE or Instagram DMs, we actively send out the reservation link for our AutoReserve restaurant page to encourage online bookings.

Our menu is still in flux right now, so we’re still considering it, but we’re thinking that eventually we’d like to introduce a self-ordering system as well. It would be more accurate if customers could place their orders on their own smartphones, and I think it would also be convenient from an operational standpoint. While preserving the unique strengths that only people can offer, we want to make greater use of systems and gradually reach a point where we can entrust more and more of the store’s operations to our staff.

I think the Respo reservation ledger isn’t just a good fit for restaurants, but also for places like hospitals, barbershops, beauty salons, and chiropractic or osteopathic clinics. These days, very few people don’t have a smartphone, and being able to make reservations online anytime, anywhere is convenient both for the business and for the customers.

Address: Royal Terrace Oiso 201, 1713-90 Oiso, Oiso-machi, Naka-gun, Kanagawa Prefecture
Phone number: 03-4361-4743
Store details:https://autoreserve.com/restaurants/ua7m8ymgGVy4n4Xipnmk