Why these 31 Venues use ResDiary's Restaurant Reservation Software

Master Kong and Madame Sunset are two of over 31 Kāpura venues that use ResDiary.  

According to Venue Manager Roosa Rasanen, the two Mount Maunganui venues in particular allow customers to order from both venues. Master Kong (which has another venue in Wellington) specialises in street food dishes from across Asia, while Madame Sunset is a modern Tiki bar with an emphasis on Hawaiian and Pacific style cuisine.

“The dual-concept courtyard is unique, with both venues featuring heaps of hand-crafted cocktails and beers on tap. There wasn’t anything quite like it before we opened, and there’s a really good offering on both sides.”

There is a huge range of venues covered by Kāpura, including pizzerias, breweries, burger joints, cocktail bars, brasseries, taquerias, cafes and more. A commonality between all the venues is that they use ResDiary to take online bookings.

Rasanen recollects that Kāpura moved from Eveve due, in-part, because of the ancillary benefits of ResDiary, including its reporting and promotional tools.

“A big appeal of ResDiary [over competitors] is that businesses can save customer information on the database, and use those details when customers book again. It’s also easy to control bookings, as customers can make, cancel and modify bookings at any point,” she says. 

“We’ve used ResDiary at Master Kong and Madame Sunset from the beginning. We definitely use it on a day-to-day basis, and are adjusting our table layout all the time.

We can see what’s happening across all of our venues

 Master Kong regularly offers promotions – for instance, at the Wellington venue, they have a $5 bao on Mondays, $1 chicken wings with a drink purchase on Tuesdays and a bottomless Yum Cha lunch deal on weekends. Rasanen says the Madame Sunset site is regularly used for private functions, with corporate work events, Christmas parties and family gatherings often occurring on Fridays and Saturdays.

As a rough estimate, she says there’s a 60-40 divide between bookings and walk-ins during the week, and they receive more online bookings on the weekend.

 “We move tables and time-slots around depending on booking demand for a particular day or evening. For instance, when we have a lot of large groups booked for the day, we [have the option of] closing out the venue. And for functions, it’s quite easy for us to save booking notes and function details, block out the venue for their time slot, and make sure no bookings are coming through,” she says. 

“Table management is very clear and organised, and we rely on ResDiary to make sure that we stay on top of our reservations, control the flow of service and offer quick turn-around during peak periods.”

Rasanen adds that Kapurā can use ResDiary data to track performance across the hospitality network.

“[Once a customer comes to one of the venues] ResDiary automatically alerts them of special deals. It also has the capacity to track average spend, spending on a particular day and spending at functions,” she says.

“It’s a [useful tool in determining] what’s happening across the different sites.”

 I don’t see why we’d ever go back to how it was

While the venue doesn’t store credit card details or take deposits in order to prevent no-shows, they use ResDiary data to review bookings. Following an incident, they have blocked certain customers from making reservations, and prevented them from booking in the future. 

Rasanen adds that the primary way that they use ResDiary is by accepting online bookings through their website, and moving tables around with little hassle.

 “It’s definitely been beneficial for us using ResDiary, and I don’t see why I’d ever go back to using pen and paper. Where we are at the moment, we rely on it a lot,” she says.

“It’s relatively simple and easy to use, we’ve trained our staff to use it, and I’m super happy with it, to be honest. I’d 100 per cent recommend it to others.”

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