U up?
Your favorite restaurants might want to text you.
SevenRooms, a reservations and customer relationship management platform, now supports text message marketing. It’s the second texting-related announcement from a restaurant tech company this week. Bring on the pings!
SevenRooms has talked about its hopes (and plans) for text messaging since its January acquisition of HeyPluto, an AI-infused text marketing platform. It was the company’s first acquisition, and leaders were clear about how they planned to use it: to build AI-supported text messaging into the SevenRooms product.
Restaurants on the platform can now send personalized marketing text messages to diners, encouraging them to book a table or attend an event. And when they do, the platform tracks the action. That means SevenRooms can tell a restaurant, with startling detail, exactly which messages are driving which diners to book tables. (Based on our podcast conversation a few weeks ago, Eater critic Robert Sietsema is going to hate this.)
But restaurants who are already using the feature seem to love it. In early testing, texts from one restaurant group, Fabio Viviani Hospitality, drove $432,000 in revenue in six months, generating 5,726 covers from 1,784 reservations.
The Federal Communications Commission has strict rules governing marketing to consumers via text message. Among them, diners have to explicitly opt in to receive these types of texts from a restaurant.
“Restaurants are not able to blast out messages to anyone who has booked a reservation. It is important for regulation compliance that guests provide their consent to receive text messages,” a rep for the company told me over email.
SevenRooms claims that its texts are opened 98 percent of the time, which this newsletter writer can tell you is an astounding open rate for any type of communication.
There is some generative artificial intelligence at work here.
SevenRooms offers 15 text templates optimized for restaurants, including personal invitations from a general manager, event invites, new menu announcements, and same-day reservation nudges. But, the company rep promises, “All of our customers currently using text marketing are very good at bringing their distinct brand voice and imagery to their marketing efforts.”
This particular comment is probably in response to my Tuesday coverage of new products from Toast, which included AI-assisted text messaging. “Here’s hoping the AI gets creative so we’re not bombarded with the same scripts from every restaurant in town,” I wrote.
SevenRooms was also eager to share a bulleted list of differences between its text messaging feature and Toast’s newly announced messaging option. [ed. note: I love when companies do this, make corporate comms fun again!] They highlighted SevenRooms’ support for images and gifs and unlimited characters in messages, among others.
This is all in service of personalizing messages between restaurant and diner.
We’ve seen a trend toward personalization for as long as restaurants have invested in guest-facing tech platforms. Products that incorporate AI — to write the texts, but also to hone offers and marketing campaigns serving the right message the the right diner — are well-positioned to help restaurants win more business.
New on The Simmer:
Your favorite reluctant podcaster is back with another great edition! This one features Aaron Noveshen, the founder and CEO of Starbird, a Bay Area chicken concept. Eight years ago, Starbird set out to “completely disrupt fast food,” and it’s been a fast-growing, tech-forward brand ever since. It’s been a minute since I’ve had a positive conversation about ghost kitchens!