The system every Private Dining Sales person has been waiting for!

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Tripleseat at a previous job, and that company unanimously agreed for all of the concepts to make the switch to their program. It was better than the other options out there at the time, and made the most sense. After working with everyone while being at that company, I brought them on board to my current employer. Their sales team, support team, training team, all of them, are so friendly, and helpful! There is no question too small, or request too large to be considered. I am a big fan, and would recommend them to anyone looking for a new booking system in a heartbeat.

Pros

My favorite part of TripleSeat is that everything makes logical sense, and is able to be customized to your needs. When inputting the information, you don't have unnecessary steps in order to get your basic needs into the system. If I have a brand new manager who only gets a date, time, number of guests, and the host's contact info, they can (within minutes) get them a contract. At the very least they can send them an email with menus and instead of loosing a sticky note, have it tracked so I can follow up. Truly this was made for the Sales person in mind, with how the data is tracked, and how much time it saves.

Cons

My only wish for the software, was that it would allow for you to track correspondence directly with a contact and not having it connected to an event. There doesn't seem to be a way to pull up someone who is in your data base, and just send them a prospecting email, or share with them updated menus or promotions. You have to export their contact information and email, or use a previous event.

Gather is the ONLY program for me!

I am saving so much time using this software with clients. Half the time it used to take me to send contracts.

Pros

Gather is the best software to use for private dining, the ease of use is like no other! You can use it on the app, computer, tablet etc... it is very easy to develop files to save on the software and send contracts to clients. Once you train your staff their are very little questions that follow because of the ease of use with this product. Clients also love it because it leaves less back and forth with contracts and they can do everything they need from the form you send them. The software also works with your email and you're notified on the home screen and via our work email. They're constantly upgrading and using new integrations as well.

Cons

This is not a con because I don't know if this is possible, but if Gather could find a way to integrate with Open Table so contracts update to that software it would be amazing. I am not a computer programmer so I have no idea if that's possible, but really their are no cons with Gather.

Tripleseat X Caboose

Overall, I am happy with the software. It was an improvement from what we were using before. Much more functionality in the backend.

Pros

I really love the ease of making quotes, pulling together events, and sharing with the team, etc. Makes my job easier.

Cons

The email functionality is lacking - see previous comments in the survey. Reporting could be better.

Extremely bad customer service, buggy software

Even though we gave them notice of cancellation after about 9 months they have twice charged our card for renewals which are not valid.

Pros

Generally the contract feature was fine. We liked executing contracts on line even though the contract tool did not have all of the client info required

Cons

Regarding our disappointment with Gather I would point to the following – all of which I have reflected to your support people and none of which have been acted on: Your IOS app seems to be able to send messages to clients and it does seem to be able to send templates but not free-form messages. Yet it often leads the user to believe a message has been sent when it has not About 45 days ago new inquiries stopped showing up in your new messages list – your support people insisted this was not a change but it was. It seems logical that new leads would be the most important new messages I asked you to make all the numbers and metrics on your Home page hyperlinked, but you have not. If I see I have two new leads I can click on that number and it takes me to the new leads. If I see I have one new contract signed, the numeral “1” is not hyperlinked and I have to search for the new signed contract. It is difficult or impossible to add a second client contact name but in the wedding business it is pretty normal to have at least two client counterparties. Yes I know about the “onsite” contact but that is not a default email recipient. Look at the confusion that appears in some proposals. Your proposals are not properly itemized and clients do not seem to notice that I have attached a “BEO” which is not a term I could define for you. Look at both “xxx” and “xxx” as examples of proposals where they thought we got the price wrong but they don’t see the security deposit because it is not itemized in the proposal. It is completely ridiculous that the client could sign an e-contract without being forced to enter and validate their address, phone, full and correct name, etc. Our normal course is we get a contract signed and then we chase down the additional information required to actually have a contract with the Zenith Additional Information form. This is cumbersome and probably not legally defensible. I want the client to execute the contract having filled in and validated their complete contact info

LOVE Tripleseat!

Tripleseat helped me almost double my sales in one year, just from taking me a way from my color-coded sticky note and hard-copy calendar system. It makes it easier to take vacations and leave the other managers with clear instructions of what they need, communicate with my team and client at the same time so everyone is on the same page, etc. I also work from home most of the time so my Chef and GM have access to all of the BEO's and client information so they can see everything without me having to be there to bring it to them. Overall I love it!

Pros

I'll start out by saying that I'm a one woman operation. I'm the only one in our restaurant that sells, details and facilitates all of our events, plus plans all of our in-house events, plus managing the actual restaurant side...so I have a lot to do! Tripleseat makes my job exponentially easier and more streamlined. One of my favorite things is that they listen to their users. Every month there is something updated that makes it that much butter, and their customer service is fantastic. They've also started hosting events so you can get hands on training, meet the team, etc. I love that!

Cons

There are a lot of features that I don't use being one person in one unit. It would be nice if there were different tiers of pricing based on the parts you use and those you don't (like a Tripleseat Lite vs. Tripleseat Multi-Unit). That's about it!

Excellent

It’s awesome. As a banquet and catering software it’s the best I’ve ever worked with

Pros

This is a super user friendly cloud based software me and my team utilize. It is so much better than previously used platforms that were. Less modernized

Cons

Sometimes there are glitches and it is hard to get ahold of someone ASAP to help rectify. It does have added options that I’d like to use but I’m not sure all the kinks have been ironed out all the time yet

Best Catering Booking Software

Always great. The customer service if I ever have a question or issue that needs sorting is quick and helpful. I use this software daily and I love using it. It makes my job and my day more efficient.

Pros

Ease of use. I can easily train other employees quickly on how to book orders. I love the customization and ease of adding new menu items. The reporting is excellent for keeping track of sales and other marking tools.

Cons

I wish that it had the ability to auto populate a packing slip for the kitchen. I.e. when fajitas are ordered for 10, it would populate on the kitchen sheet the exact amount of food by oz or quarts the kitchen would need to prepare.

Gather Rocks for Event Planning!

From the get-go, the Gather team has been a pleasure to work with. Their representatives were very well informed and knew their products, helping me make a decision to switch over to them. They helped me set up the program, and input all of the information, and they respond almost immediately any time I have a question.

Pros

This program has turned our event planning into a very easily streamlined business. It is so easy to book groups, send menus, send invoices, and even collect payment. The calendar portion makes it to where I can have my entire staff have access to seeing when dates are booked, without them seeing any other details, so they don't have to come to me to ask if a date is available. It also makes it very easy to track clients and to use as a database.

Cons

There are just a couple tweaks that could be made to make the mobile app a little more user friendly, but all in all, it is a great program.

Review of Gather software.

Being able to check in on other/all locations Speed of producing proposals to send to clients.

Pros

Use of templates and ease of data transferring within system, reports, etc. Customer service is on point! 'live' edits

Cons

Not being able to change titles of some items. Being more in line for full service and not catering how we do. Not being able to save locations for deliveries with notes. Having to export items to excel to get reports Not having a 'product mix' report of menu items

A User Friendly Necessity for Event Managers

I have always had success with Tripleseat. You can be confident using it to communicate with prospective clients and clients with future bookings.

Pros

Tripleseat's program format is very user friendly. It was developed to make creating and editing BEO's very simple. Loading your banquet and catering menus is very simple. Event quotes, contracts and payment details are all accessible without a lot of extra effort.

Cons

There's an occasional delay in menu/ pricing updating and a lot of daily emails for your team.

Indispensable Program!

The customer service team is always very efficient and timely as well as friendly. We couldn't run our business without Gather. Earlier in our development we considered other software geared toward events, but they seemed to specialize on only one aspect or two at a time. With Gather we can customize our menu making it so easy for our whole team to update a proposal at any given moment.

Pros

Our team loves how each client has his/her own customer portal. It is fairly easy to change any details at any time. It is also imperative for us to be able to send an approval request to each client at the time of solidifying details for an event. Really helps us to ensure our team can execute the event flawlessly.

Cons

We wish that Gather was able to track any changes made by one of our team members so that when a change occurs, we can know exactly who made it and why... Or that there was specific place for a team member to track changes in the portal. Also, we wish that there was a way to approve each specific section instead of just an over all proposal. Our clients are dealing with TONS of wedding details (not always through us) and they have a lot on their minds.

Gather has made my proposal writing 100% better than when I had to write them manually using word.

Quick & easy creation of bookings. Fast reaction updates with existing bookings. Immediate updates across the entire booking and all of its documents. Superior customer service.

Pros

We are a restaurant with a huge catering business and this software was designed for an on site caterer with event rooms versus everything being off site like our business model. I am looking forward to the modifications in the future that close the gap on the two concepts better. It has made proposal writing a dream! I love that everything is live across the entire booking with a click of the mouse. The customer service is unbelievable! Everyone is always so pleasant & receptive with all of my questions, comments, concerns & suggestions. The mobile app is great and we want to use it more but the team communication alert email doesn't function on mobile which renders it useless to our team. The reporting seems to constantly improving but we can not connect it to our system so we do not currently use it but I look forward to a day when we can. I absolutely love all of the filtering throughout the entire program and how there are multiple ways to find a previous booking. The calendar is my favorite view and I am looking forward to beginning to use the task function shortly. I have created many many menu templates which is superb but would like to copy one from an actual booking as well. Overall, I completely understand that this is meant for more formal venue catering so I am just grateful that I am able to utilize it at the level that I can for corporate/off site catering. It is so quick & easy and I just cant believe how effective it is to update for a client. Great job!

Cons

The biggest issue with Gather for us is that it does not report to our inventory/reporting system. We have to manually ring everything into our Revel POS system in order to capture an accurate product mix. Basically this means that this software is really only for me to create the proposal and our comptroller must recreate everything in another program. Huge waste of time but a necessary evil for me to have this valuable tool to do my job. I wish that there were more templates for multiple sections including but not limited to the notes sections. I find myself copy & pasting my own words dozens of times a day. I would like to see the lead be able to be customized because I have to ask a set series of additional questions before I may even begin a proposal. It would be really helpful to copy & paste emails into the message section to be able to assure an accurate add. I think that it is important to add a confirmation to the client that their CC info has been added correctly. I get MULTIPLE emails a week asking if we are all set since they do not get a confirmation. Please finalize the condensed versions that you have been toying with. Please go back to the notification to COMPLETE the gratuity, 50% miss it. Lastly, add the onsite contact info to the CHEF BEO. We use that version for the driver because it is a cleaner version to pack the van with. The regular BEO is only sent to the client with the proposal because it has too much going on for the delivery pack list. Thanks!

Tripleseat

When I first started working with Tripleseat 7 years ago, I did not fall immediately in love. However, as I continued to work with this software, the designers continually updated the programming and added features requested by their users. What started out as serviceable has become a truly amazing tool for planning and organizing events. With every new feature, there is a video released explaining how the feature works. The designers have created an entire online tutorial for the product, which greatly facilitates in the teaching of new users. My clients love the event overview portal! I show this tool to them as we begin planning an event and suggest that they bookmark it on their browsers so that they don't have to search through their entire email inboxes to find a conversation. Lastly, the customer service is amazing. Very fast chat replies and easy fixes. Tripleseat has a fan for life in me!

Pros

Continuous growth, integration with other software, able to be customized on many levels, great client interface for ease of planning, live document updating

Cons

High learning curve, some internal programming can be clunky, not enough freedom for customizing, email drafts are not saved, when using Seven Rooms, it would be fantastic if events were automatically populated into the reservations system

Excellent Software with a Few Frustrating Quirks

It has been an overall success at easily keeping our client focused. Instead of using many different software apps, booking, payment etc, it creates a single portal and eliminates many questions we were faced with prior to implementing. Sales tracking and other features are simple without the hassle of Salesforce integration.

Pros

The Event Portal feature. Each event having its own specialized url that allows the client to see everything in a very organized fashion makes the process of converting a quote to a sale much easier. The integration of credit card processing (we used Stripe) keeps the client from using other options (like Square) that would force them away from the portal.

Cons

Trying to keep you locked into their email ecosystem. The email integration is terrible. I wish they would support a Gmail integration. If I want to get my client to approve a proposal - they have to be emailed through their own email system that is not as user friendly and completely breaks the cohesiveness and intent of the software when I have two different email chains happening (which the client flips between without realizing). Make the event approval option available without having to email them please. In addition, they will charge you for leads from Yelp, even if they don't book! It is a very shady practice that needs to stop. Focus on good software, not making money off lead conversions from third party lead sites please.

Tripleseat review & comments

Tripleseat has grown with us at the rate we are able to understand and make positive advances with the software. They are allways available for discussion and help. My overall experence is we get very comfortable & professional service from Tripleseat.

Pros

I'm not at all a pro but so the ease of use is very important. The software was not designed originaly for my type of use, I'm a movie theater with special events. However it has been curved to be able to offer me everything I require to keep track of my special events. The calendar is esential for the number of events we have as each new movie release generates a new special event be it birthday parties or receptions and sometimes just a movie only seat reservation. Each style has to be noted and written up using the software to outline for each department in the Theater. The ability to arrange the many buckets we use to otline an event form the original set-up, as our understanding of the software increases is great.

Cons

Having to update each time changes are made to see how it will look onl the BEO is a little challenging. Then to view any changes I have to open up the BEO to see how it looks/fits etc. It would be nice to have a real time view/function of some sort to be able to see what someting looks like without having to udate first.

Very Happy Gather User

We have been using Gather for a few years now and it has definitely made our day-to-day much easier, more organized and allowed us to focus on more things to grow the business. Their customer service is very quick at responding and helpful in finding a solution to questions that have come up.

Pros

Gather has helped streamline our business by providing a fast and easy way to communicate with our clients in a clean professional format. We use the "Copy" feature very frequently as we have many repeat clients. The live update feature while we are on the phone with clients is very helpful and many clients comment how nice that is.

Cons

We wish we could customize the font size on the Chef BEO. We use the Chef BEO as orders in our kitchen and it would be beneficial for us to be able to make certain items stand out more. We find ourselves directing many clients to the "Print Summary" hyperlink on the Summary of Charges page. If there was a way for this button to stand out as the full breakdown/itemized invoice that would be very helpful.

Overall Great!

Keeping organized with Gather is a breeze!

Pros

The ease of Gather is truly amazing! The report functions I use daily to see overall growth and what needs to be improved on. The calendar is able to be viewed on the app along with a desktop as well as edited on the go from a cell phone. All documents are easy to read for sales coordinators, chefs, as well as servers. Creating events is easy and tracking channels for marketing is a great way to keep updated on marketing campaigns. Also staying organized through Gather is great by creating tasks, not only for yourself, but interns or other sales coordinators. The messaging system is great for communication with other team members.

Cons

I would love to see the sales coordinator on the pop up portion of the calendar. Also, the messages changed into a drop down, however, when you are trying to scroll for some thing, clicking on every single individual message is time consuming and everything should be about saving time. The app is only for viewing and not able to do any editing, which does not save time. Sometimes there is slowness or some glitches, such as Gather cancelling the event or duplicating the event when creating.

Game changer

Great product! They’re always adding new features. Great support team.

Pros

I love that the software is live so I can make changes on line in front of the customer, while on the phone with them and they can sit right away in front of their own screen.

Cons

Sometimes the issues with their servers slowing down can be bothersome, especially during the working hours.

Event Planning Made Easy!

Not only is the Gather team extremely helpful and responsive, but since I have switched it has cut my work time down significantly!

Pros

It is extremely easy to use and saves me time! I love everything about gather! Reporting is easy to generate, message templates cut down my work time, the online cc and event agreement make it easy for my team to reference and of course the Gather team is always friendly, helpful and has become an extension of my own team.

Cons

Honestly I do not have any complaints about the software maybe that I didn't use it sooner. I would like if they partnered with OpenTable, but I believe they are working on that.

Helps to keep my event information organized and shared with my team

I am the General Manager and Event Planner for a very busy restaurant. Gather helps to keep me organized, in touch with clients and staff, and keeps all of the information I need in one place. I love that clients can get in touch with me through a Gather link on our website, and I can convert a lead into a booking very easily. Keeping up with so many people and events is exhausting, but Gather makes it much easier for me to have all necessary information and conversations with clients in one place. I also love that I can have my clients "sign" event contracts through the website, send deposits, and put a card on file. My team can also access conversations and documents so that they can stay up to speed with what is going on. But I think my favorite part is that the bookings calendar can be synced with my google calendar across all of my devices. :)

Pros

Customer Service, price, and rapidly growing features

Cons

I can't think of any cons. I think there is always room for improvement, but nothing sticks out to me as a problem. I did, however, have some difficulty integrating my bookings calendar with my google calendar, but almost immediately, the awesome customer service team helped me out with it.