Collins has been on a great journey with Wahaca, of course a group that used to be solely walk ins. We have worked closely with the Wahaca team to identify, at first, the notion of group booking enquiries in certain sites to see the potential uplift in business. One year later we have rolled out to the full estate and asked Emily, Group Sales and Marketing Manager, on their experiences with Collins to date….

“Wahaca has historically been a restaurant which thrived on a largely walk-in only policy. Introducing some bookings across the group due to demand as we moved outside of London was a big step, and after taking it tentatively and trying different booking systems, we’ve rolled out Collins across all branches. The flexibility that Collins allows through its enquiry management features were key to getting buy-in internally and maximising trade, allowing our GMs to maintain some control and discretion for larger group bookings which can have such an impact on a service, whilst concurrently catering for smaller group bookings ticking along in the background and receiving instant confirmation at the times that suit the business.

Taking bookings out of overloaded site email inboxes and calendars and into one system has also allowed for previously inaccessible reporting, visibility and accountability across the group which was previously locked into each site’s Outlook. The pre-order and card authentication features have really helped us over Christmas, and of course taking reservations has helped us grow our local email databases for each site.

The team at Collins are incredibly quick to support us when we have questions or needs – big or small – and are always open to taking on our feedback for fixes and improvements, making the system feel like an ongoing collaborative effort from them and all their clients to make the it the best it can be. The granular degree to which you can adapt the system to work in a bespoke way for your business is far beyond what we’ve have seen any other systems offer, from the appearance of the booking widget on our website, to the hour by hour online booking availability of certain tables on certain days in certain scenarios, to the wording of your own marketing opt-in message.”