BentoBox News

Introducing the New BentoBox Marketing & Commerce Platform

February 1, 2024

Create better hospitality experiences and grow your business with the first-ever platform to put diners at the center of how restaurants operate.

Over the past few years, restaurants had to adopt new technology to survive, but they didn’t always have the time to research or find the best solution. The end result for many establishments is a fragmented mix of technology platforms that don’t talk to each other, diner data housed in silos, and a big operational burden that’s a headache to manage.

Enter: The BentoBox Marketing & Commerce Platform.

The all-in-one restaurant commerce engine helps you stand out from the crowd to attract new diners, engage current diners to keep them coming back, sell more to grow your business, and improve your bottom line by making operations more efficient.

At the heart of the platform is BentoCore, which houses all of your diner data and centralizes your menu information, marketing tools, and branding materials. This means that you can provide a consistent experience across every channel, and every touchpoint is unified in branding yet customized for each diner through segmentation.

Diner-facing modules — like Restaurant Website, Takeout & Delivery, Reservations, and Events Management — are all powered by BentoCore. These modules talk to each other, giving you a complete view of diner information that’s critical for delivering great hospitality.

Hear from Krystle Mobayeni, the Co-Founder of BentoBox and Head of Restaurants at Fiserv, and then read on for a deeper dive into the four components of BentoCore: Diner Database, Marketing, Menu Management, and Brand Center.

Diner Database

Simply put, it’s now better than ever. Visit the Diner Database to see the ordering history, preferences, and more for any of your diners, then use that information to create the right hospitality experiences for them. Updates include:

Reservations Booking History

With Booking History, you can click into a reservation and view in-depth details of that booking, including the reservation and diner details. Reservation information includes name, party size, visit type, table status, and date & time. Table status will update in live time to include seated, not seated, canceled, and no show parties. Diner details show email address, phone number, table assignment, visit tags, visit notes, and notes from the guest.

Read more: Reservations Booking History

Diner Sign-Up Overlays

Promote something specific, like an event, news item, or special offer, with an alert that appears as an overlay on your website. There are three types:

Promotion Overlay: This overlay generates a popup on your website, enabling you to provide customers with a promotional code in exchange for their email submission to your diner database.
Announcement Overlay: With this overlay, a popup appears on your website, allowing you to communicate announcements directly to your customers.
Custom Overlay: Design a popup from scratch that will appear on your website based on your configurations.

Marketing

Get the right messages to the right people at the right time with less work. The Marketing & Commerce Platform seamlessly connects with your Diner Database and marketing tools, so you never have to sync or import lists. Plus, you can automate marketing messages to ensure your marketing is working even when you aren’t. Here’s what’s new:

Email Campaigns

We know there are many options for operators to choose from when it comes to email marketing. However, we know not all solutions are created equal. This is a native solution that comes with branded, easy-to-use templates that match your website and digital presence and send to targeted audiences that exist in your Diner Database.

Email Campaigns come with three pre-built templates, all with your branding and logo:

Newsletter is a more “meaty” email with plenty of space for curating your restaurant's monthly highlights, including menu updates, upcoming events, and other call-outs.
New Menu Item is ideal for a quick announcement like spotlighting a new special, promotion, or seasonal event.
Blank Canvas is just what it sounds like — a blank canvas. This template allows you to customize your email with text boxes, photos, hyperlinks, and buttons.

Read more: Email Campaigns User Guide

SMS Campaigns

SMS Campaigns allow customers to send 140 character limit SMS messages directly from the Marketing & Commerce Platform that target specific diner segments. Selecting an audience will work the same as Email Campaigns by using your Diner Database.

Restaurants can send a test message to confirm and approve the final SMS message. You’ll also be able to track month-to-date and year-to-date analytics including the total number of SMS sent, total subscribed diners, and unsubscribe rate.

Read more: SMS Campaigns User Guide

Custom Segmentation

For both Email Campaigns and SMS Campaigns, you can create custom segments to support your marketing goals. A segment is a subset of diners in your Diner Database. Segments refer to groups of people with similar characteristics, behaviors, or demographics. For example, you can create a segment of all diners with an April birthday or anyone who attended an event. This allows you to better tailor your marketing and communications strategies to meet the specific needs of each diner segment.

Read more: Campaign Segments & Opt-ins

Automated Marketing Campaigns for Online Catering

You can now set automated emails and SMS texts to follow up with customers eleven months after their last catering order was placed. If the catered event is annual, the customer may be ready to place an order again.

Read more: Automated Marketing Campaigns

Menu Management

It’s finally easy to manage all of your menus from one central location to keep them synced and consistent. Edit once and everywhere your menu shows up is updated automatically — perfect for when you want to rotate specials, change modifiers, update your images and prices, change out seasonal menus, or simply change an item on your regular menu.

Brand Center

The Brand Center stores all of your restaurant's branding in one central location, making updates faster to increase operational efficiency. Centralizing your logo, colors, and fonts also ensures a consistent look and feel across every diner touchpoint — from your website to reservations to ordering.

Know Your Diners, Grow Your Business

Better guest experiences and faster growth are all yours. The more modules you activate on the platform, the more data BentoCore can collect for a complete view of your diners and your business. Current customers, contact your Customer Success Manager to make sure you’re leveraging all of the tools available to you.

New to the BentoBox Marketing & Commerce Platform? Get in touch with our team, or call us directly at +1 (877) 353-2447.