Playbooks / FAQ / Restaurant
Restaurant loyalty + ordering questions, from LA operators.
The questions LA restaurant operators ask before signing up — what gets replaced, what stays, how aggregators fit, and what happens when the Saturday rush stresses the system.
Does Rehost replace Toast, Square, or Clover?
No. Those are point-of-sale platforms — payments, kitchen tickets, payroll integration. We don't replace them. We replace the customer-facing layer that wraps around the POS — the loyalty add-on, the online ordering tool, the email and SMS marketing, the reservation system, and the website. Your POS stays where it is and we integrate.
What happens to our existing loyalty program when we switch?
We import the member list, the point balances, and the redemption history into the new app on day one. Members keep their points and their tier. The first push notification they get usually says "your loyalty just got better" — and points to the new app on the App Store. We've migrated thousands of members across LA-area restaurants without losing a single point.
How do you handle delivery aggregators (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates)?
Aggregators stay where they are — they're a separate channel with separate margin economics. We don't replace them. What we do replace is your direct online ordering (the Gloria Food / ChowNow / DoorDash Storefront layer) — that's the channel where you keep the customer relationship and the higher margin. Direct orders flow into the app and the customer record; aggregator orders stay on the aggregator side.
What's the right loyalty structure for an LA restaurant?
Depends on the operation. Family Italian restaurants like Nonna's Kitchen do well with simple punch cards (10th meal free) — high redemption rate, builds habit. Fast-casual spots benefit from points-based systems with tiered rewards. Coffee shops typically run "buy X, get Y" because the visit-frequency makes the math work. We configure to your operation rather than ship a one-size-fits-all program.
Can we run birthday and anniversary campaigns?
Built in. The app captures birthdays at signup (or imports them from your existing list), and triggers a free dessert / bottle of wine / 20%-off offer in the days leading up. LA-area restaurants we work with see 35–45% redemption rates on birthday campaigns when the offer is sized right.
What about reservations — does this replace OpenTable or Resy?
Yes. Reservations live inside the same app, with table-preference memory (Diego's regulars get the booth they always sit in), waitlist management, and seating-chart logic. The reason most LA restaurants run OpenTable separately is per-cover fees that compound on weekends; consolidating into the Rehost app eliminates the per-cover cost.
What happens during a Saturday-night rush if the system goes down?
First, we monitor 24/7 with on-call paging — if the customer-facing app or POS integration breaks, an engineer is paged within minutes. Second, the app caches the seating chart, the order pad, and the recent customer list locally on your iPad — so even if connectivity drops, the dining-room manager can keep operating. The Rehost on-call SLA covers Friday night and Saturday night specifically because that's when restaurants need it most.
How does the customer record actually unify across reservations, ordering, and loyalty?
One record per customer, with a phone number as the primary key. A reservation booked Tuesday and a pickup order placed Saturday hit the same record. The loyalty points accumulate from both. The birthday push the next month references both the dine-in history and the takeout history. This is the piece that no stitched stack ever quite gets right — and it's where most LA restaurant marketing leaves money on the table.