Nearly five years ago, Greek Australian Peter Petroulas, realised that the existing booking systems for restaurants, cafes and dine-in venues were complex and often ineffective.
With the knowledge he had acquired as an airline executive and a restauranteur, he proceeded to create a new generation, more dynamic restaurant booking system that would be affordable and available to every establishment, worldwide.
“I started the process of trying to develop a new generation restaurant booking system over 5 years ago, as existing systems like OpenTable, Yelp and The Fork are simple systems that merely allocate bookings to existing and unused tables.
The inadequacies of the existing booking systems meant that they were only capable of taking bookings on existing empty tables, they had no intelligence in helping a restaurant in the dynamic allocation of bookings or the optimisation and management of those tables,” Petros Petroulas told The Greek Herald.
Little did he know, back then that ResButler, the system he developed, not only would give a solution to the complexities and inefficacies of current booking systems, but it would also be able to manage a restaurants tables and booking allocations to guarantee all government Covid-19 social distancing regulations are met.
“I am excited that ResButler is ready and can assist in fighting Covid-19 by helping restaurants and other sit-down venues re-open as part of the re-opening of economies, getting people back to work and returning society back to some form of normality,” Mr Petroulas said, explaining that the technology he offers is available to everyone, thus the charge of 5 cents per booked diner.
But what did Petroulas do differently to other researchers and international companies who have been trying to solve the ongoing table management system problem?
“I approached the problem from a different perspective. I didn’t focus on doing something better. Because when you aim to do something better, you do the same, just better. I focused on finding a different solution,” he said.
“My parents came to Sydney from Greece when I was four. They bought a house that needed renovation. My dad gave me a tape measure and asked me to help him measure around the house. So, I learnt about the sense of space and the importance of dimensions from a young age.
“This is how I created ResButler. I approached the booking system problem not as a strictly mathematical one, but as a space allocation one”.
Now, Greek Australian Peter Petroulas hopes that his system will be appreciated and adopted by the industry, in Australia and worldwide.
