Wysera playbook · wysera.ai/for/restaurants
Restaurants: where the revenue leaks, and what to fix first
A restaurant runs on single-digit margins and pays double-digit commission on every delivery order. Worse than the money is the ownership: the app keeps the guest, so the person who ordered from you on Friday is a stranger on Monday and you cannot reach them. Meanwhile reservations no-show without a deposit, the review that decides tomorrow's covers goes unanswered, and the regulars who used to come fortnightly quietly drift to monthly. Wysera is the layer that makes those guests yours.
1. The four leaks
- 01Delivery platforms take a commission on every order and keep the customer. You get the sale once and no way to reach that person again, which is the expensive part rather than the fee.
- 02Reservations no-show with no deposit and no reminder, and a table held for a party that never arrives is revenue that cannot be recovered later in the evening.
- 03Reviews decide tomorrow's covers. They arrive across Google, Yelp and TripAdvisor, most go unanswered, and nobody is systematically asking the happy guests to leave one.
- 04Regulars drift without anyone noticing. There is no list, no visit history and no reason to reach out, so a guest who came fortnightly for two years just stops and nobody calls.
2. What to fix, in order
Step 1. Own the guest, not rent them (OpsWyse CRM)
Every order, booking and enquiry builds a guest record you actually hold: what they ordered, how often they come, when they last did. That is the asset the delivery apps will not give you, and it is what makes every other line on this page possible.
Step 2. Move orders direct (PostWyse + OpsWyse)
Campaigns that give a guest a reason to order from you instead of the app: the same food without the marked-up menu, a loyalty offer worth more than the app's discount, an SMS at five on a Friday. Every order that moves direct keeps the commission and the relationship.
Step 3. Stop losing the table (OpsWyse)
Deposits on bookings that warrant them, automated confirmations and reminders, an easy reschedule instead of a silent no-show, and waitlist backfill when a slot opens. A held table nobody sits at is the most expensive thing in the room.
Step 4. Reviews, asked for and answered (PostWyse)
The post-visit review ask automated, owner responses drafted for approval across Google, Yelp and the rest, and local SEO for the searches that actually fill a dining room. Dining out is a reputation purchase, and reputation is the part most restaurants handle whenever there is a spare ten minutes.
Step 5. Bring them back more often (OpsWyse CRM)
The guest who has not been in for sixty days, the birthday coming up, the regular whose visits are thinning. All of it surfaces on its own, with the message drafted from what they actually order, ready to approve. Frequency is cheaper to buy than a new guest.
Step 6. The half a marketing platform does not run (OpsWyse)
Hiring and onboarding front and back of house, rotas, supplier notes, prep and safety SOPs, projects, internal docs and chat. Forty-plus modules with the same agent across them, because a full dining room becomes a staffing problem faster in this business than in any other.
3. Your ROI worksheet
Fill these in with the people who know the numbers. The live version at wysera.ai/for/restaurants#roi does the arithmetic.
| Input | Your number |
|---|---|
| Delivery and takeaway orders a month | |
| Average order value | |
| Commission the apps take | |
| Share you could move to direct ordering(your estimate) | |
| Reserved covers a month | |
| Average spend per cover | |
| Reservation no-show rate today | |
| Same, with deposits and reminders(your estimate) | |
| Regulars who have stopped coming | |
| Share you could bring back in a year(your estimate) | |
| Visits each returning guest makes(your estimate) | |
| Marketing and software spend a month | |
| Share of that Wysera would replace(your estimate) | |
| What you would pay Wysera a month(your estimate) |
4. Questions to ask any vendor
- Are you telling me to leave the delivery apps?
- Does this replace Toast, Square or OpenTable?
- How do you actually move orders direct?
- We are a small team with no marketing person. Is this realistic?
- What does Wysera cost for a restaurant?
Wysera answers all six at wysera.ai/for/restaurants. Ask every vendor on your list the same ones and compare the answers side by side.
5. The honest fit test
Good fit: Independent restaurants and small groups doing meaningful delivery or takeaway volume, or taking bookings, who have no guest list of their own and no reliable way to bring a regular back.
Poor fit: A single site with no delivery, no bookings and a queue out of the door, where the constraint is capacity rather than demand. Also not a point-of-sale, a kitchen display system or a booking engine, and not trying to replace them.
Wysera · wysera.ai · Every number in the worksheet is yours to supply. Nothing in this playbook is a promise about results.