2022 - What a year!

As 2023 comes closer, there couldn't be a better time to reflect on what we have all done, seen, experienced and created in 2022. It has been a year best described as changeable (and that is being charitable!): restaurants have had to deal with multiple challenges, from the hike in energy and food costs to a severe labour shortage and the odd pandemic.

Despite this, the UK's pubs, restaurants, bars and cafes have remained remarkably resilient: their owners, managers and staff doing their upmost to provide the fantastic level of food, drink and hospitality they're famed for. But simply surviving wasn't enough for most – by marching forward, amending plans, introducing new business models and innovating, many are thriving. From launching new menus, pricing, service models such as take-away and adopting next-generation technology, many have gone on to thrive.

Restaurants and F&B businesses in the UK, from the high street to villages and city centres, we salute you.

At this time of the year, every year, the team at Favouritetable gets together to reflect on our own twelve months. It is astonishing how time and events slip by, so this annual tradition – shared among our fantastic team in software development, marketing, sales and admin – is a great way for us to give ourselves a collective pat on the back. Hopefully, then, you'll forgive the few moments of self-indulgence before we launch into doing it all again in 2023 – here are the things of which we're most proud in 2022.

Marketing & Media

We won the Best restaurant Listing & Reservation Systems Provider accolade at the UK Enterprise Awards

• Our weekly blog count grew to fifty one posts. We'll try to make it fifty two next year!
• The Favouritetable brand reached over 993,940 new opted-in email recipients and a featured in major campaigns across social media platforms
• We featured in full page ads within a number of key hospitality publications
• Our MD & Founder, Jaipal, wrote monthly columns in Restaurant Update, Eat Drink Sleep and Hotelier Hospitality & Design magazines on subjects as diverse as no shows, localism and of course the technology landscape
• The restaurant directory website www.favouritetable.com received inbound traffic of over 450,000
• Our team also completed a light-touch re-fresh of our B2B website, restaurant.favouritetable.com, adding many new pages

Stats

For those who love a statistic or two, here are some of our highlights from the reservation platform and its modules. In 2022 and on behalf of Favouritetable restaurant customers, we processed:

• 10,482,462 restaurant bookings overall
• 5,976,919 online bookings
• 113,626 take-away, dine-at-home and click/collect orders
• 37,000,000 table covers, 19m of which were online
• more than £4,000,000 of credit card revenue

Technical Development

The software development were extremely busy, as ever. Here are just some of the product additions and updates they introduced this year:

• Web-based demo sign-up, so customers can try Favouritetable in their own time
• Similarly, the work is done on our forthcoming auto sign-up portal. New customers will be able to subscribe to Favouritetable online, and be up and running in minutes
• A feature which allows restaurants to automatically chase guests for deposits and payments if they are late (and cancel the booking altogether if necessary!)
• New back-to-back bookings feature, to maximise occupancy
• A lovely tablet based native floor plan
• New guest-facing (“B2C”) apps for Android and IOS, together with a customer profile feature at www.favouritetable.com
• Menu Pre-Ordering, online. Great for party and group bookings!
• New multi-timezone and country zones within our server infrastructure
• Multi-language on our online booking widget
• We completed new integrations with Deliverect, Stuart & Squaremeal
• ...and finally, we maintained a best-in-class system uptime of 99.9%

From the whole team at Favouritetable, thank you for your interest in, and being part of our family of restaurant software users. Here's to 2023!

Book your January demo today!

Favouritetable is contemporary, easy to use restaurant management software designed to increase bookings, efficiency, revenue and profits. Loved by restaurateurs and UK-based, it's the best value next-generation restaurant management software on the market. 

Choose an online demo with a real person, or try the system at your own pace with a demo account.