If you are considering new marketing ideas for restaurants, you should definitely explore the option of implementing the latest technology in restaurants, known as text pagers for restaurants. Properly used, such a solution could lead to substantial increases in productivity and profitability. Why, because it is not an ordinary coaster locator.

To reduce your initial costs when shopping for a restaurant pager system, you can opt for a used pager system, provided of course the benefits outweigh the drawbacks by a sufficient margin. If you approach investing in any part of your restaurant business with well-defined long-term acquisition goals, cheapest doesn’t always equate to best. However, there are exceptions to this, so let’s start by taking a look at the advantages.

The professionals

The positive aspects of choosing a used restaurant pager system over a new one may depend on the individual characteristics of the buyer, but always revolve around the cost factor. Clearly, used restaurant pager systems are much cheaper than new ($4,000), and this may be enough of an incentive for businesses to explore options on the secondhand market.

With innovation always just around the corner, the cost of technology is dropping at a very rapid rate, making restaurant text pagers or cell phone pagers a much more attractive and affordable alternative to a traditional pager system for guests. Restaurant text pager systems like Mobile Matradee or Guest Text have a built-in SMS text marketing application that can be very effective in driving business on nights when you don’t have to wait to increase your revenue.

The cons

As with anything that is used or not new, you will have little or no knowledge of your system’s usage history. Some drives may have been dropped, repaired, modified, or even not working right in the first place. Therefore, buying second-hand can be risky.

Be sure to also consider battery usage in the units you are purchasing. Many pagers use expensive proprietary batteries instead of standard AA batteries, so be careful with that. Another advantage of cell phone pager systems is that the pager is the guest’s actual cell phone, therefore you are not responsible for maintaining or replacing the pagers.

In addition, your system’s warranty or after-sales support may have expired and may require additional costs to renew. Also, unlike a new guest locator system, you’re unlikely to receive installation assistance or training, at least not without paying more. While most paging systems aren’t really that difficult to use, choosing the right system for your restaurant is critical.

Also, verify that the system has no financing owed to it. If you were to shop at a restaurant that is about to be liquidated, you could run into trouble with the liquidators a few weeks down the line. Lastly, consider whether spare parts or replacement parts are still readily available, at what cost, and for how much longer. If the unit you are purchasing is no longer in production or has been replaced by a new model, please check its compatibility level with the old one before making your purchase. Our recommendation is to sign up for a restaurant text pager solution for essentially the same investment as a quality used coaster pager system with a higher return on investment.