About Restaurant Vuur
Located in the Baarse Bos forests, Restaurant Vuur combines a modern, culinary kitchen with a warm and homely atmosphere. The restaurant serves classic French dishes with a modern twist and offers guests the opportunity to combine meetings, lunches, dinners and team activities all in one location.
Iris Otten is Sales & Marketing Manager at Restaurant Vuur and has been working at the restaurant for three years. For Vuur, great hospitality starts with listening to guests and creating an arrangement or programme that fits their needs.
Otten: “For us, it’s about listening to what the guest wants. What exactly are they looking for? What matters to them and what are their expectations? By responding to that, we can create an arrangement or programme that really fits their needs.”
Challenge: maintaining oversight in a complex operation
At Restaurant Vuur, around 75% of guests make a reservation in advance, while 25% arrive spontaneously. Having clear insight into reservations is therefore important across the entire operation, from the kitchen and purchasing to staff planning.
Otten: “The kitchen prepares its mise en place based on the number of reservations. We also plan our staff accordingly. That’s why it’s important for us to know what to expect in advance. For groups and events, we also pay close attention to the menus and arrangements guests have chosen. This helps our kitchen team prepare and ensures smoother planning and service throughout the evening.”
Solution: visibility and control with Guestplan
Guestplan plays an important role in Restaurant Vuur’s daily operations. For Iris, its greatest value lies in the overview it provides: “Guestplan gives us control, peace of mind and a clear overview of the evening. It gives us a sense of confidence.”
The team can quickly see how many guests are expected, when they will arrive and which preferences or dietary requirements have been recorded.
Key Guestplan features for Restaurant Vuur include:
- Reservation overview: insight into guest numbers and arrival times
- Guest profiles and notes: previous visits, preferences and dietary requirements
- Group preparation: access to information such as menu preferences in advance
- Deposits: Vuur uses deposits for holidays, special events and themed evenings.
Guest data: from reservation to relationship
Restaurant Vuur has many returning guests from the local area, as well as companies that regularly return. Personal recognition plays an important role in those relationships.
Guestplan helps the team make that recognition part of the guest experience. When a returning guest calls, Iris can see how often they have visited Vuur before and which information from previous visits is available.
Otten: “When guests make a reservation by phone, I can see their previous guest information. For example, how often they have visited us and which allergies or preferences they have. I regularly adapt my conversation based on that information, which contributes to a more personal service.”
Connected hospitality: systems that work together
In addition to Guestplan, Vuur uses systems including MICE Operations and Lightspeed. These systems are not currently connected, but Iris sees significant value in a future where different specialised systems can work together.
“The idea of a connected hospitality ecosystem really appeals to me: not one system that does everything, but different systems that work well together and share information,” says Otten.
This is particularly relevant for Vuur because Iris regularly switches between different systems. Better connections between those systems could directly reduce the time and manual work involved.
The future: technology that creates more room for hospitality
Iris also sees AI as a development that could play an increasingly important role. Examples include automatically processing reservations made by phone or making it easier to modify reservations.
For Restaurant Vuur, technology is ultimately not the goal in itself. It is about organising the operation effectively so the team can focus on the guest.
Conclusion: more control, more room for hospitality
Restaurant Vuur shows that a reservation is about much more than simply securing a table. The information available in advance provides an important foundation for both the operation and the guest relationship.
With Guestplan, the team has greater insight into what to expect during a service, while guest information helps them recognise returning guests and provide more personal service.
By creating more visibility and control behind the scenes, Guestplan gives the team more room for what hospitality is ultimately about: giving attention to the guest.
