Yelp’s Recent Integration With Toast and Google — What it All Means

Yelp is one of the most popular listings directories, especially for restaurant brands. With more than 130 million monthly visitors to Yelp.com, your multi-location restaurant brand must have a presence on Yelp. In this article, we’ll discuss Yelp’s recent integration with Toast and Google and its impact on your restaurant brand.

Yelp Guest Manager Integrates With Toast and Reserve With Google

To improve your restaurant’s user experience (UX) and simplify front-of-house operations, Yelp recently integrated Yelp Guest Manager with Toast, a restaurant management software company. This integration gives restaurants — particularly hosts and hostesses — insights from Toast’s point of sales (POS) system. Yelp Guest Manager also recently integrated with Reserve with Google — enabling diners to reserve tables or join a waitlist directly from Google Search and Maps. Yelp hopes these integrations create a more seamless guest experience for diners and improve restaurants’ front-of-house operations.

How the Toast Integration Benefits Your Restaurant

As mentioned,Toast is a leading cloud-based restaurant management software company. Thus, it makes sense for Yelp to partner with them. Restaurant brands can benefit from Yelp Guest Manager’s integration with Toast through: Operational efficiency: The tech stack and data integrations allow restaurants to stay on top of the floor and better track floor changes. Optimized table turn: Automated table status updates allow your restaurant staff to seat guests quickly and focus on other hospitality duties. Integrated data: Combining front-of-house and point-of-sale data makes it easier for restaurants to prioritize diners and improve guest relations.

How the Reserve With Google Integration Benefits Your Restaurant

Yelp’s integration with Reserve with Google allows diners to join a waitlist or book a table with restaurants listed in Yelp’s network through Google Search and Maps. Once diners make a booking, they can further manage their booking and see additional details in the Yelp app. Here’s an example of the reservation process through Reserve with Google:

Gif of someone joining a restaurant’s waitlist using Reserve with Google on their smartphone and showing the integration with Yelp.

According to Anthony Cross, Vice President of Restaurant Product at Yelp, “The way we [Yelp] think about the Google integration is that we’re combining Yelp’s large network with an equally large network in Google. Combined, by a significant margin, it’s the largest consumer network in the U.S.” This integration makes it easier for diners to discover and book reservations at restaurants and inherently gives your restaurant more insightful data within your now expanded tech stack.

Other Important Restaurant Technology Integrations

These integrations are becoming more common across the restaurant technology segment. For instance, Yelp’s recent integrations came soon after Square’s integration with OpenTable, Facebook, and Instagram. These types of integrations will simplify your restaurant brand’s daily operations and give consumers a superior booking and dining experience. For multi-location restaurant brands, a few additional restaurant technology integrations are worth noting. In April 2023, SOCi integrated with Punchh from PAR Technology (PAR) to help restaurants better acquire and retain diners through Punchh’s loyalty and engagement platform. This integration allows SOCi clients to pull customer reviews from the Punchh platform into the SOCi dashboard. The partnership with Punchh makes it easier to manage online reviews across all major networks, including Google and Yelp, from the SOCi dashboard. Furthermore, in April 2022, SOCi partnered with Olo by integrating with the Olo API. This integration permits Olo data to pass through the SOCi platform and allows your multi-location restaurant brand to manage your local listings better. For more information on how SOCi can support your multi-location restaurant brand’s digital marketing, request a demo today!