News

Yelp triples Q4 2018 number of bookings over prior year's quarter

February 26, 2019

Yelp said it has experienced significant growth in its use in the last several months, particularly in the number of diners booking at restaurants directly through its app, which tripled during the last quarter of 2018, over the prior year's quarter, a news release said. 

Likewise, the company said during Valentine's Day week this year, Yelp's reservation and waitlist software handled 5.6 million diners, which followed December 2018 when it managed 22 million diners. In fact, Yelp said its reservations and waitlist features are helping evolve Yelp from restaurant discovery platform to a channel for direct communication between brands and diners for everything from reservations to food delivery.

"Product innovation in 2018 has paved the way for us to build even stronger relationships with current restaurant partners and to attract thousands of new ones," Yelp Restaurant Marketplaces General Manager Devon Wright, said in the release. "This momentum is the early result of Yelp's long-term strategy to acquire and integrate leading restaurant technologies into Yelp and offer a seamless dining experience for both restaurants and consumers."

First Watch Digital Marketing Manager Becky Maree said Yelp has helped that brand's restaurant hosts to better understand where and when tables open so that they can optimize customer flow. 

"The software allows guests to get in line from their mobile phone and gives the customers the option of getting in line while they're still en route to the restaurant," Maree said in the release."The analytics tool gives us insights into our restaurants that we wouldn't otherwise have. Using the Analytics Portal we can identify top performers and easily address areas of opportunity in our restaurants."

Last year, Yelp added brands to Yelp Reservations and Waitlist and also introduced new products, like Yelp Kiosks, that help manage restaurant business more efficiently physically and digitally. The company said its data show diners seated through the Yelp app return to the same restaurant twice as often as other diners. 

The company said its "wait time" algorithm is about twice as accurate as hosts' wait time estimates, while its "On My Way" feature helps brands seat 10 percent more people in off-peak hours. By way of example, Yelp included the experience of San Francisco's Tony's Pizza Napoletana, which said the brand increased sales by 25-30 percent with help from the company's wait-time forecasting.  

"We used to be reliant on an emotional analysis of our hostess or managers to provide wait times but, with the help of Yelp, our wait time has reduced by almost an hour and a half," Tony's Pizza Napoletana North Beach GM Diego Perez said in the release about the brand's notoriously long table wait times. 

Additionally, through the company's partnership with GrubHub, food orders and takeout on Yelp hit a new record high and grew by 27 percent in Q4 2018 from the previous year.