#A, an office worker at a start-up in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, “breaks the stamp” of a restaurant even during lunchtime on weekdays for about an hour and a half. Reservations are often full for each restaurant, but this is thanks to the ability to remotely queue (waiting) using the app. If you put your name on the waiting list around 11:00 a.m., when it starts to get crowded, you can enter in time for lunch. There is no need to endure endless waiting under the scorching heat. “It feels like my quality of life has improved,” he said.
As the offline restaurant market, which had shrunk for several years, is revitalized, competition for dining out platforms is also ignited. Just as the delivery app market grew rapidly during the pandemic, the use of platforms such as waiting and table ordering systems is rapidly spreading, centering on popular offline restaurants.
New ‘Culture’ Waiting AppAccording to the startup industry on the 10th, the cumulative number of uses of the waiting service provided by the food service platform Catch Table exceeded 650,000. The waiting service, which Catch Table launched at the end of last year, is rapidly increasing in number of users. Compared to March this year, the number of uses last month increased by 1500%.
The catch table put forward the subdivision of weighting as a differentiating point. Beyond simply registering contact information and number of people, you can choose the hall/room or packaging. When a user enters another store, the wait is automatically canceled to prevent ‘no-show’. Although it is a latecomer in the waiting field , the company believes that it will be able to aim for the No. 1 market share based on the 3 million monthly active users ( MAU ) of the Catch Table app itself and about 7,000 affiliated stores.
Before Catch Table entered the market, Table Ring and Now Waiting competed for first and second place in the domestic waiting service field. Tableling secured 1.15 million MAUs and 3 million members as of last year. It is characterized by the ability to use features such as remote queues or order delays using ‘bombs’, which are paid goods that can be used inside the app. Paid goods can be obtained through its own payment system. In addition, Now Waiting, which started the service first in 2017, put forward a KakaoTalk-based service rather than an app-based service. It has the advantage of increasing accessibility for both store owners and consumers. Yanolja took over this service in 2020. In the industry, waiting is MZ
with the restaurant business boomingIt is noteworthy that it has established itself as a culture centered on generations. There is even a new coined term, ‘zero-order culture’, in which people spend their time in other places such as cafes while waiting in line at restaurants. This means waiting is no longer a tedious process. Yong Tae-soon, CEO of Ward , a catch table operator, said, “In the food service industry, the movement to go beyond reservations and target the waiting experience is accelerating. ” said.
Ordering and payment is also ‘self’When you enter the restaurant after waiting, the table ordering system that allows you to order menus on your tablet catches your eye. When you sit down , you can check the menu and order through the tablet PC installed at the table . There are also systems that allow direct payment by credit card. It is a field that has grown even during the pandemic due to the spread of non-face-to-face culture and labor cost issues, but since then, as dining out has been activated and labor costs have increased, it has grown in size.
In this field, T-order, which was launched in 2019, maintains the No. 1 position in the industry. In addition to the ordering function, entertainment elements such as games and a function to communicate with the store owner or tables in real time through a tablet were introduced. Based on this, 110,000 tablets were installed in restaurants nationwide. The amount of payments generated through T-Order annually exceeds KRW 1 trillion. Recognized as a preliminary unicorn company (an unlisted company with a corporate value of 1 trillion won or more), T.O.D.E.D. is being evaluated for a corporate value of close to 500 billion won in the investment market. T.O.D.O.D explained, “The advantage is that the table turnover rate increases as customers can order directly from their seat.”
Menuit and Menutok are also competing스포츠토토 with T-order in the field of table ordering. Menuit is chasing T-Order with an annual transaction amount of around 500 billion won. In addition, Fahere, which introduced a cloud-based POS system, entered the tablet ordering business, and KT also started competing in this field by launching High Order in May.
There is a prospect that the dining out platform will be reorganized in the form of a ‘super app’ in the future. It is a way to gather all the experiences of eating out from reservations to waiting, payment, and table ordering into one app. For example, Menuit released a waiting function through a tablet, and Catch Table plans to launch a table order service. Tabling has launched its own payment solution, Tabling Pay. Each company is aiming for a lock-in effect that keeps consumers staying on the platform through this.
○“Only 10% of people in their 50s or older use it”As waiting and ordering become unmanned, it is constantly pointed out that the ‘digital divide’ between generations may widen. According to Wise App, an app analysis service, the proportion of users of major waiting apps is over 80% in their 20s and 40s. Only 10% were over 50 years of age. The share of users aged 60 or older in Table Ring is only 1.3%.
Concerns are also raised that paid services could rather increase the cost burden for small business owners. This is because the cost of the waiting app is new compared to before it was introduced. Now Waiting receives a monthly fee of 35,000 won from restaurants.