How Giraffe made tables available 10 minutes sooner by letting guests pay when they are ready.
10 min
tables available sooner
In a busy restaurant, two groups of guests are waiting at the same time.
One group has finished eating and wants to pay and leave. The other is standing near the entrance, waiting for that table.
Both are waiting for the same thing: the payment to be completed.
At Giraffe in Nicosia, FoxPay shortened that wait. Guests split and pay from their own phones when they are ready, and tables became available 10 minutes sooner.
The wait at the end of the meal.
With a traditional card machine, the end of a meal follows a familiar sequence.
The guests ask for the bill. A member of staff brings it. They come back with the card machine. If the group is splitting the bill, several payments are processed one after another. Only then can the table be cleared and reset.
Each step is short. Together, they keep a finished table occupied while new guests wait.
During busy periods, that delay affects both groups. The guests who are leaving feel held up, and the guests who are arriving wait longer to sit down.
Letting guests pay when they are ready.
With FoxPay, guests do not need to wait for the bill or the card machine.
They scan the QR code at the table, review the bill, split it if they want to and pay from their own phones. As soon as they have paid, they are free to leave.
There is no app to download, and FoxPay works alongside the restaurant’s existing POS. The team at Giraffe kept serving guests in the same way, while the payment step needed less of their time.
A day of brunch, simulated
Ten minutes a seating. It adds up.
One table at an all-day café, followed from 9am to 4pm. Each seating frees up 10 minutes sooner, so the next one starts earlier. By the afternoon, there’s time for one more.
Still view: with the card machine, the table fits 5 seatings between 9am and 4pm. With FoxPay, each seating frees up 10 minutes sooner, so a sixth fits in.
ResultAt Giraffe, Nicosia: tables available 10 minutes sooner, every seating
What changed at Giraffe.
With guests completing their own payments, the gap between finishing the meal and leaving the table became shorter.
Tables at Giraffe became available 10 minutes sooner.
That gave the team more room during busy service:
- Guests split and pay from their phones when they are ready
- Staff clear and reset tables sooner
- The next booking is welcomed with less waiting
- The card machine is no longer the slowest part of the visit
Why ten minutes matters.
Ten minutes may not sound like much for a single table.
Across a full evening of bookings, it is the difference between guests waiting at the door and guests being seated on time. It also means the people who have finished their meal can leave when they want to, rather than when the card machine arrives.
For a busy restaurant, a faster finish benefits everyone in the dining room. For staff, you earn back a part time staff member’s time to focus on hospitality, rather than admin.
How long do your tables wait?
Most restaurants measure how quickly food reaches the table. Fewer measure how long a finished table takes to become free again.
At Giraffe, letting guests split and pay from their phones made tables available 10 minutes sooner.
