In the heart of Singapore, Chef Dan shared his sushi skills on social media. He had over 10K instagram followers showing his sushi-making skills and showcased it in his home, friend's apartments, and even local cooking classes. With a new business idea, Chef Dan decided to try his hand at Omakase Tasting by renting out part of a restaurant space. He wanted to create a brand online and turned to Shopify to create his store and direct his Instagram followers to his Shopify store to learn and book his Omakase tastings. To cover the rent, he used Easy Appointment Booking to take payments beforehand, an earned $8K before his first booking! He took Shopify bookings and payments in advance, managed his customers, and focused on growing his business all with Easy Appointment Booking.
Chef Dan opened his Shopify store, set up his basic details, then went on the hunt for a Shopify Appointment solution. In searching for a few apps, he found Easy Appointment Booking to be the easiest to set up and fastest way to get started. It was a no-code, no-complex setup that allowed him to take reservations with his own schedule, setting his own capacity, and email reminders to keep his customers in the loop.
Becoming an Omakase chef overnight was more expensive than I thought. I had the know-how, but no investment up front. The best way I could test this out was taking bookings in advance using Shopify. Easy Appointment Booking made it...well...easy! Taking bookings and payment up front help me focus on my craft. It had all the right features and customization to have the booking workflow set up exactly how I wanted it. Customer emails, adding direction to Google maps, rescheduling rules, a link to review - it was a few clicks, that's all! Ray and team were fantastic and I couldn't have asked for a better Shopify booking solution.
Customers loved to book with him, but sometimes plans came up and they needed to change the dates and times. Customers would typically email or call him asking to rebook. While it was great to have bookings, this type of administrative work took time away from Dan's focus on his Omakase events. Rather than adding more burden to his time and adding another teammate to help, he used Easy Appointment Booking's rescheduling feature. Not only could he reschedule for the customer if they called in, there was a way for customers to reschedule on their own, which is available to the customer as soon as they book and receive a confirmation email. It came in handy for Dan, and he was able to set his own criteria, like only being able to reschedule within 48h, and those links to reschedule were available right in the customer confirmation emails. A time-saver indeed, that let Dan continue on perfecting his Shopify experiences and less time managing them.
Tucked away in the corner of a busy street, finding Chef Dan's Omakase experience was not very easy and took some time. Dan operated at a restaurant under a different name to start, since it was part of an existing restaurant where he rented out a small amount of space. So as a customer who booked with Dan, finding this on Google Maps wasn't very easy and customers didn't pick this up quickly, they kept going to the wrong location! This resulted in customers reaching out, getting confused, and arriving late to the appointment. For an Omakase experience, timeliness is critical as all participants must arrive on time to eat each specific meal set. Luckily, in just a few clicks, Dan added a link to Google Calendar in his reminder emails and added a reminder text 4h before the customers arrived. This made it easy for customers to prepare for the event, the link to Google Maps got them right to his door, and his no-show and late-show occurrence reduced by 80% overnight!
Finding success with one Google tool, Chef Dan decided to try out Google Calendar, a widely-used calendar tool. It has an integration with Easy Appointment Booking and together, it made it a really powerful, robust Shopify appointment management solution for Chef Dan. Once he set this up in two clicks, he was able to manage time more effectively, keep track of his bookings, and focus on his craft.
This integration enabled an automatic sync of appointments directly into his Google Calendar. Each time a booking was confirmed, Chef Dan saw it right in his Google Calendar, without having to open up the app. As a result, Chef Dan could manage his appointment schedules and other commitments in one centralized place. If he was out sick one day or the restaurant had a private event, he could add a personal calendar event in Google Calendar. That personal calendar booking blocked it from his customers being able to book. This reduced the chances of overbooking or missing appointments, giving Chef Dan a huge peace of mind. This type of time-saving is a common theme among our customers, including Annette who found the same benefit with Google Calendar. In fact, over 70% of Easy Appointment Booking's Pro Plan customers use Google Calendar for this benefit.
Eleven months later, Dan has booked over 4200 bookings, netting him over $100K in Omakase bookings. He has plans to scale out to his own restaurant and a team, who can manage bookings directly -- luckily, Easy Appointment Booking features help with a standalone booking portal for each team member and a waitlist to capture high-demand bookings and convert those to customers later on. He sees Easy Appointment Booking as more than a Shopify app, but as a Shopify booking platform that saves time, earns revenue, and grows his experiences.
All the best Dan, we're rooting for you!
