Want to build relationships with your guests and improve customer retention? Create personalized digital guest experiences? Then you need a restaurant customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Restaurant CRM software helps you collect, unify, and benefit from guest data to support your business and marketing needs. Among other benefits.

But how can you choose the ‘best’ restaurant CRM for your restaurant and needs? What are the best CRMs for restaurants out there? And what makes them the ‘best?’

In this article, we’ll be answering several restaurant CRM questions:

• What are the best CRMs for restaurants?

• What are the benefits of each restaurant’s CRM?

• How can you choose the best CRM for your restaurant business or chain?

   

Keep reading to get all of your questions answered.

Benefits of using CRM software for your restaurants

Before choosing the best CRM for your restaurant business, let’s go over the benefits of using a CRM.

• Collect guest data to create an accessible, unified database

• Review guests’ historical orders, including previous experience ratings and reviews

• Get access to guest analytics

• Be able to add various integrations to improve your processes

• Access to direct marketing opportunities (varies from one restaurant CRM to another)

• Increase retention by creating personalized restaurant experiences

Among other benefits.

Best CRM for restaurants compared

Now, let’s compare the top CRM software for restaurants.

For each of the following restaurant CRM systems, we’ll cover top features, pricing, availability of a free trial or free plan, and the cons of using this particular software.

SerVme 

SerVme is an easy-to-use, constantly growing, restaurant table management system and CRM.

F&B operators using SerVme can manage many restaurant operations. This includes creating guest profiles, managing reservations, creating personalized digital and in-house experiences, and increasing guest retention and revenue. SerVme makes it incredibly easy for hospitality operators to make better-informed decisions to boost revenue and foster lasting connections with their guests.

Key SerVme features

• Guest CRM: With SerVme, restaurants not only collect general guest data, but also information like guest birthdays, allergies, dining preferences, special requests, and more. SerVme’s restaurant CRM software acts like a database, helping you create personalized guest experiences across your venues, branches, and marketing.

• Dedicated support team: One of the top perks of using SerVme is getting dedicated, round-the-clock support. Our customer success team is available online, via phone, and email.

• Restaurant marketing platform: F&B operators can manage their entire email and SMS marketing campaigns from within SerVme. No need for external integrations or third-party sites. You can use the guest database and segmentation features to create email marketing campaigns that drive retention, revenue, and results.

• Guest surveys and reviews: Getting guests to review each dining experience has never been easier. Using SerVme, you can automate quick guest surveys to be sent right after the guest pays the bill or leaves the venue. You can create a single-question or multiple-question survey.

• Advance Integrations: SerVme offers restaurants and chains many integrations to help them grow and streamline various operations. Using SerVme, you can integrate with some of the top POS systems for restaurants, use our phone integration, and property management system (PMS), among others.

• PMS: SerVme integrates with the Oracle property management system (PMS) for hotels. This means restaurants inside the hotels can easily manage bookings, view guest preferences, and check-in and check-out dates by looking up guest room numbers and more.

• Enhanced reservation widget: Restaurants using SerVme can create events and manage reservations, including collecting reservation fees, using the SerVme widget. Guests can make payments and deposits using the widget, which you can customize to your brand and tone.

• Advanced reporting features: with SerVme, restaurants and F&B operators can generate daily and monthly reports, along with customized data such as top-spenders, top-selling menu items, and more. You can even compare your new and repeat guests in a given week or month, or any custom period.

• No cover fees: One of the major perks of using SerVme is that we don’t charge cover fees for reservations. Ever!
    Regardless of where your guests make bookings from, we don’t charge for covers.

• Auto-tags: SerVme’s auto-tagging feature takes guest segmentation to a whole new level. This means you can create tags, list the rules for joining these tags, (ex: guests who spend $100 per visit), and let it work its magic.
  Whenever guests pass the $100 per visit rule, they’ll be added to this tag. You can name and customize the tags based on your needs. You can then use these tags to create targeted email and SMS marketing campaigns.

Pricing: SerVme’s payment plans are designed to help restaurants of all sizes benefit from reservation and table management software. Plans start at $99 per month and can reach $300 per month depending on the size of your restaurant business, needs, and integrations needed.

SerVme offers special discounted pricing for annual subscriptions.

Free trial availability: Yes.

Toast 

Toast is a restaurant point of sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience. Toast recently introduced reservation and table management features, making it a restaurant CRM. Restaurants using Toast can collect basic guest data like name and contact information.

Key Features

• Email automation: Toast is known for its email marketing software for restaurants. Specifically, being able to create a massive email list to reach as many guests as possible.

• Easy-to-use software: Customers praise Toast for being easy to use. Toast offers an amazing fully integrated solution: from an easy-to-use POS system to modern hardware solutions. 

• Good reporting: Toast users say the CRM provider has good reporting features. All the reports you could need are at your fingertips. 

• Inventory Management: Toast’s inventory management module can save countless hours of the inventory and ordering process workflow, and provide a living, breathing inventory that updates in real-time based on the menu items placed by front-of-the-house staff!

Pricing: The upfront costs for Toast are hardware and implementation, which vary depending on your specific hardware packages and installation needs. 0% interest financing by application and subject to approval.

Toast Core Package starts at $69/month, ideal for restaurants looking to streamline operations. However, the add-ons and integration required have different pricing which will significantly increase your overall cost.

Cons of using Toast

• Weak support: Many Toast users complain that the software lacks efficient support and that they have to go through many AI prompts before they can reach a support specialist.

• No description with updates: Like any CRM software, Toast releases updates. However, customers report that these product updates aren’t descriptive and lack much-needed explanation.   

• Cover fees: Toast has a cover fee of $0.99 on all orders via its POS system.

SevenRooms 

SevenRooms is an all-in-one platform for hospitality operators to drive revenue, streamline operations and deliver amazing guest experiences.

Key Features

• Multilingual reservation widget: Besides collecting guest data, SevenRooms’ reservation widget supports 15 languages.

• No cover fees: Like SerVme, SevenRooms doesn’t charge cover fees for reservations via its widget.

• Reservation management: SevenRooms lets you manage reservations and cancellations with ease across different types of dining options. You can easily create reservations, manage tables, book events and keep track of all customer data. 

• Marketing Features: This CRM offers customers restaurant marketing automation features along with analytics. You can engage guests with targeted email marketing campaigns, promotions and personalized offers. 

Cons of using SevenRooms 

• No clear pricing: One downside of using SevenRooms is that they’re not clear on pricing anywhere on their website. They mention having 3 pricing packages and customizing packages based on customers’ needs, but there’s no reference to how much they charge. However, research shows SevenRooms’ pricing begins at around $700 per month.

• Customer support: SevenRooms doesn’t offer live customer support. To contact customer support, you need to email them first.

• Not available on Android: Another downside to using SevenRooms is that they don’t support Android devices, which limits a restaurant’s options.

Resdiary 

ResDiary is an online reservation system, designed to help hospitality operators run a smooth service. They offer reservation management and customer profiling. Restaurants using Resdiary can integrate with POS systems, accounting software, and marketing software.

Key Features

• Reservation widget: You can create booking widgets for your website for reservations, event enquiries, or building your guest database.

• Manage Special Events: Manage large party bookings online and accurately forecast expected spend, and use filters to easily identify corporate and private events.

• Diner-Facing Platform: Dish Cult is ResDiary’s diner-facing booking platform for restaurant recommendations. The desktop and mobile app puts your restaurant in front of more diners and simplifies the booking process. It’s currently exclusive to ResDiary customers.

Pricing: Resdiary’s pricing begins at $89 per month with a limit of 150 covers. You may choose to add covers for extra fees for this plan. Their most expensive plan begins at $189 per month.

With annual plans, you get free months. However, there are no additional benefits to getting an annual subscription for the basic plan.

Cons of using Resdiary

• Integration pricing: Resdiary lets restaurants add integrations such as POS, PMS, and SMS messaging. However, the cost of each integration can be high.

• Complex software: Reviewers who have used Resdiary say the software isn’t easy to use, resulting in them wasting time and effort.

• Poor customer service: One of the major downsides of using Resdiary is its limited customer support. Especially after users set up the account or when they need help.

Eat App 

Eat App provides cloud-based applications to restaurants for increasing efficiency and revenue through real-time restaurant reservations, guest data management, CRM and many restaurant management features. 

Key Features

• Guest profiling: Eat App customers can create advanced guest profiles to create a database of their guests and their preferences.

• Automated survey system: Restaurants can automate the guest survey process by messaging guests after a dining experience.

Pricing: Eat App has a free membership of up to 30 covers. After that, pricing is divided across 3 tiers. For the paid tiers, EatApp offers free trials. The first tier, called Starter, stands at $55 per month and includes up to 100 SMS messages. Their most advanced tier, Pro, amounts to $223 per month. 

Cons of using Eat App

• Separate pricing for integrations: Eat App’s pricing for integrations is not included in their monthly and annual plans and can become quite pricey depending on the integration needed.

• Limited floor plan customization: Customers using Eat App say the company’s floor planning feature is limited in how much customization is involved. Customers wish there was more they could do with the feature.  

TableCheck 

TableCheck is a restaurant management system offering table management, and reservations, with a focus on guest experience management. TableCheck’s restaurant booking and guest experience platform helps restaurants and hospitality operators drive long-term success for their businesses. 

Pricing: TableCheck isn’t clear about its pricing. However, according to GetApp, TableCheck doesn’t have a free plan, but they offer a free trial.

Key Features

• Easy-to-use: Customers say TableCheck is easy to use. It helps enhance the restaurant’s daily operations, synchronize guest information, and implement real-time table status. 

• CRM software: TableCheck’s restaurant CRM lets customers set up guest profiles, view and share them across venues, and understand guest preferences. 

Cons of using TableCheck

• Device support: TableCheck only supports Apple devices such as iPads and iPhones but doesn’t support Android devices.

• Lacks customer support: This restaurant CRM tool lacks adequate customer support. They don’t have phone or online support. Unlike many restaurant CRM systems on this list, TableCheck doesn’t have a Help Center or Knowledge Base or video tutorials.

OpenTable 

Unlike many of the best restaurant CRM systems on this list, OpenTable is a dual-facing restaurant management platform. This means they serve both restaurants and customers.

Restaurants can use OpenTable for table and seating management, while guests can use OpenTable to search for restaurants to explore. As a restaurant reservation platform, OpenTable has several websites, each serving a country.

Key features 

• Rewards program: One of the perks of using OpenTable is getting access to their Diners’ Rewards program. However, this is limited to US restaurants.

• Central database: OpenTable collects all guest details in one place and helps restaurant operators segment and engage guests via Email based on preferences.

Pricing: OpenTable has 3 tiers. The first, called Basic, is worth $39 per month. Meanwhile, their Core and Pro tiers amount to $249 and $449 per month, respectively.

The Basic tier lacks POS integrations, waitlist management, and email marketing automation, among other perks.

Cons of using OpenTable

• Cover charges: One of the biggest disadvantages of using OpenTable is that they charge per cover. That is you’ll be charged for every seated guest that comes through OpenTable.

• Not many options: For guests looking to book tables, many reported that OpenTable had limited dining options and only housed high-end restaurants.

• Glitches with integrations: Meanwhile, several restaurant managers say they were frustrated with OpenTable’s interface and glitches with POS integrations. Some users also had problems with managing reservations because of OpenTable’s integration glitches. 

How to choose the best CRM for your restaurant

As you can see, some restaurant CRM systems stand out over others. But naturally, there are also many similar features.

So, how do you decide which CRM is best for ‘your’ restaurant, chain, or group?

Here are a few questions to ask yourself.

• Do you have a current restaurant management system? What features does it have?

• Do you have a system to collect guest data? Is it easy to unify this guest data or do you end up having many duplicates?

• Are there any limitations to the number of guests or size of your database?

• Does the new restaurant CRM offer customer support? Is it a simple chatbot support system or do you get to talk to actual people?

• What kind of reports does this CRM generate? Are they customizable?

• Is it easy to export data from the CRM to share with a manager or F&B director?

• What types of integrations are available with this restaurant CRM system? Can I integrate with POS systems to review guests’ ordering history?

• Is the restaurant CRM GDPR compliant?

• Does this restaurant CRM have a built-in messaging platform? Or does it let me integrate with email and SMS marketing platforms?

• Does this CRM come with a help center or knowledge base?

• Does this software include constant upgrades and new features?

Use SerVme as your restaurant CRM system

By now, you should have a clear idea about the similar and different features each of the top restaurant CRMs has.

In this section, we’ll highlight a few SerVme-only features.

Auto-tagging 

We’ve briefly mentioned auto-tagging above. However, without meaning to sound cliché, auto-tagging is a game-changer for restaurants. Specifically, in how restaurants can use it to create ultra-personalized digital and in-person experiences.

Restaurants and F&B groups using SerVme can create auto-tags and use them across all of SerVme’s features. For example, you can create an auto-tag for frequent guests at your Dubai branch. Guests who come to your restaurant over 5 times every 3 months are auto-tagged loyal and frequent guests.

You can use this information to tailor various email marketing campaigns to these guests. As a reward for their loyalty and frequent visits, you can offer them free dessert every time they pass 5 visits.

Floor planning software 

Part of managing a restaurant is having to combine tables to accommodate large groups. With SerVme’s restaurant planning software, you not only have a clear view of your restaurant at all times but can also decide which areas in your restaurant are optimal for large groups and which aren’t.

If you host events or need space for a special show, you can move tables on your restaurant’s floor plan to ensure smooth flow at all times.

Direct reservations via social media 

Want to increase reservations at your restaurant? SerVme has you covered with an integration with Facebook and Instagram. This means guests who follow you and engage with you on social media can also book tables directly from these platforms. And with no cover fees!

New features 

At SerVme, we want our guests to grow bigger, and expand into new branches, venues, and countries. That’s why we’re constantly working on adding new features, updating current features, and listening to our customers and their needs.

For example, some of our most recent features, like Manager’s Notes, were requests made by our customers.

Want to see what one of the best CRMs for restaurants can do for you? Try SerVme’s restaurant CRM software today!

Disclaimer: The disadvantages mentioned regarding competitors in this article are taken from online user reviews from websites such as TrustRadius, G2, Capterra, and others. At SerVme, we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information. We understand that these reviews are subjective and only reflect the opinions of those who shared them.