Leading Wine Industry Reservation System Adds Table and Wait List Management

CellarPass, the leading online guest management service used by the largest wine brands in the world, announces the launch of CellarPass Table Pro, the first-ever table management platform designed for tasting and tap rooms. In conjunction with the new app launch, CellarPass has expanded into new markets by adding offices in California, Washington and New York, regions where winery, brewery, distillery and other craft beverage businesses are growing rapidly.

Developed by a team that includes wine industry and technology veterans from the SEO, ecommerce, guest management and compliance sectors, CellarPass Table Pro enters the growing table management market that until today has been led by companies that have been slow to meet the complex scheduling needs of the craft beverage market. CellarPass Table Pro is an iOS app designed for iPad Air, iPad Pro and iPad Mini and is now available to CellarPass Table Pro subscribers and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store.

CellarPass has earned its lead by looking past current guest and table management philosophies, disrupting the status quo of using restaurants as the ideal business type for which to develop table and guest waitlist tools. CellarPass founders realized early on that craft beverage companies such as wineries, breweries and distilleries have far more complex scheduling needs than restaurant-based systems are designed to manage. Today’s craft business requires a platform that supports properties offering multiple experiences and/or events that take place at different times of the day and days of the week (in most cases simultaneously).

Guests want to be able view all tasting and tours options and immediately book, whether that’s through the businesses’ own website, a search engine or through a mobile device on CellarPass.com. CellarPass offers the unique capability for each event to be configured to require payment at time of booking, prior to arrival or pay upon arrival, even display available upgrades such as a charcuterie plate, merchandise, a VIP greeting and so forth.

“During our initial development of CellarPass, we quickly realized that the Open Table model would not work well for the complex nature of the craft beverage industry,” says Jonathan Elliman, co-founder of CellarPass. “Our winery partners may offer a vineyard tour once or twice a day and only on Saturdays and Sundays. Restaurant platforms only focus on covers and time slots. They expect guests to select their menu choice upon arrival and that is not how the craft beverage industry operates,” continues Elliman. “At our core, we provide the tools to allow our partners to make their schedules as simple or as complex as they like, even offering seasonal event management and promotion tools that automatically turn on and become unavailable during different seasons of the year, continues Elliman. “Being able to stay ahead of craft beverage’s technical needs says a lot about our teams’ decades of industry experience.”

In addition to schedule flexibility, craft beverage properties demand the ability to quickly and easily manage multiple floor plans simultaneously. CellarPass Table Pro allows tasting rooms to design and view an unlimited number of floor plans at a single property. Assigning a party to a table or multiple tables, whether they are booked as a reservation or added to a waitlist, is a simple point-and-tap procedure. Color-coded tables and progress bars in the app keep staff informed, eliminating the need to constantly walk around to understand table availability and estimated wait times.

Clear and seamless communication with visitors is a must when it comes to guest management. CellarPass provides the tools for partners to customize their own confirmation emails, cancellation notices and with the launch of Table Pro, two-way SMS messaging is now at the heart of the app, allowing guests and hosts to interact directly through Table Pro.

Beyond event management, CellarPass is integrated with the leading ecommerce and club member platforms to look up guests’ purchase history and club status, allowing staff to make critical business decisions. Rare to guest management systems is business intelligence. With CellarPass, craft beverage business users can see the entire lifecycle of how a guest became aware of the brand, booked their visit and ongoing purchase habits with CellarPass’ integrated partners like Vin65, Vinsuite, Salesforce, MailChimp eCommerce 360, Facebook Pixel and other popular industry eCommerce platforms.

For the past five years, CellarPass’ guest management platform has been used by the largest and most in-demand tasting rooms in the U.S., most notably in Napa Valley and Sonoma County and is now expanding quickly across the U.S. CellarPass completed their first round of investment last July, giving them the capital to open new regional offices in Seattle, Paso Robles and New York. The offices are to facilitate regional support in new markets. In 2016, CellarPass booked nearly one million guests generating $27 million in event fees and is positioned well to meet their 2017 goal of booking over $35 million.

CellarPass set the benchmark for syndicating their content on search engines and third party sites. Today, guests can book their reservations seamlessly through Bing, Google, YP.com, Yelp and many regional destination marketing sites throughout the U.S.

About CellarPass
Launched in 2012, CellarPass is the leading real-time winery, distillery and brewery tour and tasting reservation service that offers consumers easy and free access to confirmed tickets and reservations, online or through a mobile-friendly website.

With offices in San Francisco, Paso Robles, Seattle and New York, CellarPass offers technology tools that provides wineries, distilleries, cideries and breweries an enterprise-level guest management and marketing system to promote their events nationwide while connecting with guests, enhancing the visitor experience and building long-lasting relationships.

For more information about CellarPass, visit www.cellarpass.com. Follow CellarPass on Facebook at facebook.com/cellarpass, on Twitter at twitter.com/cellarpass  and on Instagram at instagram.com/cellarpass to get fresh updates.

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