Restaurant Booking Survey

 

To uncover people’s sentiments around restaurant booking platforms and attitudes around public dining during Covid 19, I designing a survey.

Along with TasteFor’s co-founder, we distributed the survey to our primary & secondary networks on social media.

We had 85 respondents in a quick two day span.

 

What is your age?

Majority of our respondents were Millennials and Gen X.

What best describes your environmental setting?

62% lived in metropolitan areas, 32% lived in suburban areas, 6% lived in rural areas. I was satisfied with this make-up going off the assumption that this wasn't too dis-similar from the usage make-up of restaurant discovery apps.

How familiar are you with restaurant-booking apps?

The audience had a high level of familiarity with restaurant-booking platforms.

How would you describe your overall opinion of them?

There's fairly high affinity but still room for growth & area for opportunity.

When you think of restaurant-booking platforms what comes to mind?

 

Opentable was mentioned 28 times. Yelp and Resy were also commonly associated.

“Resy, Opentable, Yelp booking. Fairly convenient - allows me to see a large number of options, and see what is available. Generally speaking, I use booking platforms only when I am trying to book a table for a large group.”
— Survey Respondent 72
“Availability, times, locations (indoors, outdoors, hightops, etc)”
— Survey Respondent 54
“Opentable, convenience of booking without haven’t to talk to anyone.”
— Survey Respondent 33
“I’ve used them without problems. I used open table before. One time I wanted to be able to call or text a restaurant to see if they were open or they had space before ordering a ride to the place but they were unresponsive. During covid these kind of services would be very useful.”
— Survey Respondent 61
“Resy immediately comes to mind. Ease of booking as well as easy modification and cancellation.”
— Survey Respondent 28
“The only time I have used a booking platform is when I search a restaurant on Google. If Google gives me the option to reserve a table then I will, if not then we usually go and take our chances or call the restaurant ahead of time.”
— Survey Respondent 12
 

People value these platforms for:

  • Information around hours of operation and seating availability

  • Optionality of restaurants & flexibility around commitment

  • Assurance of group seating accommodation for larger parties

  • Insight into the optionality of seating types offered, especially outdoor seating emphasis during Covid 19

During Covid 19, how often have you dined at restaurants?

People are still dining out but less frequently.

How has your perception around dining out changed during Covid 19?

Over 60% of respondents viewed dining out less or much less favorably during the pandemic, however there's still a size-able market of people loyal to the pastime of dining out.

What are your most important factors when choosing a place to dine?

(Choose all that apply)

Standard factors including positive reviews and cuisine type are highly valued. Covid 19 protocols are considered but only of moderate importance.

To what degree does dining with other people affect your decision to dine out?

Dining with others is central to the idea of dining out. One of our key assumptions was validated.

In general, how would the use of a shared calendar impact your likelihood of seeing your friends and loved ones?

Half of the respondents have at least moderate interest in a shared calendar solution to see their friends and loved ones more, a common gripe in the pandemic.

Can we contact you for a follow-up 15 minute interview?

(If so, please leave your name and email address below)

 

46 respondents left their information.

To dig deeper I chose to interview 10 of them, 5 women and 5 men from a variety of geographic regions, over a 5 day span.