Almost anybody who has eaten in a restaurant is familiar with restaurant pagers. Since they were first used in restaurants during the late 1980s, restaurant pagers have helped a lot of people by sparing them from long waiting times and allowing them to enjoy at the bar or even outdoors while waiting to be seated.

Guests are given restaurant pagers upon giving their order. While searching for a table or waiting for the food, the guests are free to go to the restaurant’s bar for some drinks, smoke outside, or just roam around. As soon as a table is available, the pager makes a warning sound or vibration tone to notify the guests. The guests then turn over the pagers to the waiter before being seated.

Paging provides a lot of benefits to restaurants everywhere. Waiters do not have to spend time calling out names and wandering around just to notify guests. They only need to contact them through the beeper. This means waiters can spend more time actually serving people and taking orders. From a business manager’s point of view, using restaurant pagers help optimize table management and utilize staff resources better.

Restaurant pagers are available in different sizes and forms, some of which are designed to go well with a restaurant’s theme. For example, pagers used in seafood restaurants are sometimes designed to look like a lobster or fish. They are usually small and very portable, so guests don’t have to worry about carrying around a large piece of plastic gadget while they wait. Since restaurant pagers allow the guests to move freely, this eliminates potential stress that guests might experience when waiting for long lines at the front desk or at the hostess stand. There are cases when customers get fed up with waiting for a long time and decide to look for another place to eat. Not only does a business lose a customer, that customer can also give feedback that might keep other customers from going there.

Today, restaurant pagers are still constantly being improved. Some beepers display actual table numbers and custom messages, and SMS messaging is also being integrated in restaurant paging. These new paging systems are getting increasingly popular among restaurants everywhere.