Restaurant Pagers

Depending on the unique circumstances of your operation, you may find yourself considering buying a used restaurant pager system. This no doubt presents quite a few pros and cons.

Investment in any part of your restaurant business should be tackled with sensible, long-term procurement objectives, which can mean that cheapest doesn’t always equal the best.

Anyway, first, let’s look at the cons.

Like anything that is used or not new, there is going to be a usage history to it that you’re probably unaware of (unless you’ve purchased from someone you know). Units may have been dropped, repaired or even not have worked properly in the first place. Buying 2nd-hand really doesn’t give you much come-back if this is the case.

Consider also the battery-usage in the units you are buying too – many pagers don’t use standard AA or AAA batteries, and could use expensive proprietary batteries. It could well be that the pager batteries have reached the end of their useful life.

More than likely, any warranty or after-sales support is well and truly expired, and will come at a cost to renew or continue.

And unlike a new system, you’re unlikely to get any installation or training support (at least without a cost). Having said that, pager systems aren’t really that hard to use, but there can be a bit involved in getting them tailored specifically to your needs for a start.

Make sure that there is no finance owing on the system. For example, if you buy from a restaurant that is about to go into liquidation, you could find the liquidators on your door a few weeks down the track.

Consider also if there are still readily available spares or replacement parts. Is the unit still in production? Or has it been replaced by a new model. And are they compatible?

Pros

To be honest, I don’t have many positive points for buying a used restaurant pager system.

Obviously, a used restaurant pager system is going to be a heck of a lot cheaper than a brand new one. This means that you can use your budget to possibly buy a better system. So you could buy a brand-name pager that you may have some knowledge of it’s reputation without having to buy a system you have never heard of.

Ultimately, it’s a business risk where you need to weigh the negatives with the positives, and only you can make that call.

If cost is a big factor in your decision, maybe another option to consider would be leasing, or a cellphone based paging system.

You should also bear in mind that the cost of technology really is coming down all the time. Highly versatile paging systems can be bought at a fraction of the cost that they would have cost 3-5 years ago.

If you are set on buying a used restaurant pager system, at least see if you can look at the same (or a similar) one in operation (much the same as if you were buying a new one).

The primary aim of this website is to present you with all the information you might be looking for regarding restaurant pagers.

Initially, you may be asking, just what is a restaurant pager? And how is this going to help me run my restaurant?

Well, this nifty little device can come in all shapes and sizes, and carry out a variety of different functions too. Essentially, a restaurant pager will carry out two main tasks in a restaurant. Communication between wait staff and their customers, and also just between the staff themselves.

Used to its full potential, a restaurant paging system should lead to a dramatic increase in productivity in your operation – thereby justifying what can seem an exorbitant initial outlay. Of course, no two systems are alike, so hopefully this website will help you decide which is best suited to your operation.

I’ll note here too that the face of restaurant paging is no doubt in for some fairly dramatic changes in the near future too, predominantly with the increasing use of cell phone and Internet technology. These are areas I’ll be looking to explore in further posts.

I’ve set up this site to help those that may be looking to buy a restaurant pager system. Hopefully I can help make the process a little easier for you and you can make an informed decision before you hand over the cash. So, on this website, I’ll attempt to try and cover everything related to restaurant paging systems. Eventually this will include pager reviews, tips on maintenance and just about anything in general that I feel may be relevant.

If you like to know a bit about me, check out the about me page. And feel free to drop me a line if you want to say hi or perhaps have some feedback (good or bad).

If there’s something specific that you’re looking for on this site, try using the search box.

And if you have any questions, again please feel free to contact me, or leave a comment. Hopefully myself or one of the other readers will be able to help you out with your restaurant pager query!

An interesting study recently released by the The Center for Hospitality Research, a unit of Cornell School of Hotel Administration.

A comparison of eleven technologies commonly used in restaurants found that restaurant customers find virtual menus with nutritional information to be the most valuable of new technologies, followed closely by online reservations, kiosks for ordering, and pagers for table management.

View the complete report here