Note: This is a feature available on our paid plans. Google is currently limiting this feature to Restaurants and Café businesses, but might open to other industries in the future.
Waitwhile has partnered with Google Maps to make it easier than ever for your restaurant to allow diners to view the waitlist and join directly from Google Maps. This feature is called Reserve with Google, and is available on both desktop and mobile.
Interested? Here's how it will look:
We believe your guests will love the convenience of joining the line right from the Google Maps listing, and in turn, this should lead to more diners at your location. You can view Analytics of how many diners joined on-premise compared to via Google Maps to track the incremental revenues this feature is driving for you, too!
Steps to activate Reserve with Google for your location
Ready to get started? To turn on this feature complete the following steps for your Waitwhile location:
Make sure your business is listed on Google Maps: In order for Waitwhile to sync properly with Google Maps for this integration, it's important that your business is already listed and visible on Google Maps. Don't worry - the Waitwhile integration will work even if you haven't claimed the business.
Make sure your business is a "Restaurant" of "Cafe": That's right - Google only supports this feature with restaurants or cafes right now. Once you are sure that your business is listed and visible on Google Maps, you'll need to ensure that the business type for your location is set correctly. This integration is designed specifically for restaurants, so you'll need to make sure that your business type is set as such in your Waitwhile settings. You can set this under Settings > General > Business Info. Be sure to select the "Restaurant" or "Cafe" option to enable the Google Maps integration for your location.
Confirm and match the address to your Google Maps listing: Make sure that the address you have listed in Waitwhile is the same as the address you have associated with your Google Maps listing. You can update your business address in Waitwhile to match at Settings > General > Business Info.
At a minimum, the following fields should be provided:
Business name
Location name
Street address
Postal code
City
Country
The following information, if provided, may also be used by Google to more accurately match your business, but is not strictly required:
State
Business website
Business phone
The above information will only be used by Google to identify your Google Maps listing, and will not be visible on Google maps.
Update your waitlist hours: Make sure that your waitlist hours are set to open when you want them to show on Google Maps. Click Set opening hours to open the menu to edit the hours associated with the Waitlist.
Turn on the Google Maps integration: Under Settings > Public > Registration, you can scroll down to find the Google Maps registration options. Toggle on Enable Google registration. As a reminder, these options will only show when you have enabled the Restaurant option described above.
Once the above is done, the ability to join your waitlist through Google Maps should become available within 72 hours.
Ensuring your location is ready to receive new guests from Google Maps
In order for customers to be able to join your waitlist through Google Maps, ensure your location meets the following criteria:
Your waitlist must allow public registrations, and must not use features such as “Allow only invited customers to join” or “Enable geo-fence for waitlist”.
Your waitlist must not require a mandatory service selection.
Your waitlist must be open and have room for additional signups.
You must not be at your plan’s visit quota.
Locations not fulfilling these criteria may result in your waitlist on Google Maps not appearing, appearing as closed or full, or being unable to accept new registrations.
Limitations
A few Waitwhile features behave differently on Google Maps:
Visitors will only be able to supply their name, phone number, and email. No other input fields or selections will be used, even if they are set as mandatory.
Visitors with a waitlist entry through Google Maps will always see the number of parties ahead and a current waiting estimate, even if the location is normally configured not to.
Unlike when using Waitwhile’s normal waitlist flow, visitors currently need to manually update in order to view up-to-date information regarding their waitlist entry, such as estimated waiting time.
If you run into any issues, just contact us on support@waitwhile.com or through chat!