Automating Your Food Business Marketing: Using App Notifications to Fill Slow Seats in Ireland

Tuesday lunch service at your Dublin restaurant: 12 tables sit empty. Thursday evening in your Cork café: only 6 customers during what should be peak hours. Sunday afternoon at your Galway restaurant: staff outnumber diners.

Every Irish restaurant knows these slow periods. The predictable gaps between busy services, the quiet weeks after bank holidays, the summer lulls when locals holiday abroad. Empty seats cost you money every minute they sit unfilled, yet traditional marketing to fill them costs time and money you don't have during slow periods.

What if you could automatically notify customers about availability exactly when you need them, reaching people who already want to visit your restaurant, without spending hours on social media or hundreds of euros on advertising?

App notifications let Irish restaurants automate the exact marketing message they need (we have tables available now) to the exact audience who cares (people who already follow your restaurant) at the exact moment it matters (when seats are empty). The cost is a fraction of traditional advertising, the effort is minimal after initial setup, and the results fill seats that would otherwise generate zero revenue.

Over 180 Irish restaurants now use automated app notifications to manage capacity, reporting average revenue increases of €340-€1,200 weekly from seats that previously sat empty during slow periods.

The Real Cost of Empty Seats in Irish Restaurants

Walk into any Irish restaurant during a slow period and you'll see the same scene. Staff standing ready to serve, kitchens fully prepped with ingredients, tables set perfectly, lights on, heating or cooling running. Everything costs money whether customers fill the seats or not.

The mathematics of empty seats are brutal and immediate.

Fixed Costs Run Regardless of Customers

Your restaurant pays full rent whether 5 tables are occupied or 25. The landlord doesn't reduce rent during slow Tuesday lunches or quiet Sunday evenings. That €3,200 monthly rent in a Dublin suburb costs €106.67 daily, or roughly €13.33 per hour for a 8-hour service day.

Staff wages continue during slow periods. Your servers, kitchen staff, and hosts receive full pay whether they serve 10 customers or 50. A typical small Irish restaurant with 5 staff working a slow lunch shift pays €110-€140 in wages during those three hours, regardless of revenue generated.

Utilities run constantly. Heating in winter, cooling in summer, lighting, refrigeration, cooking equipment on standby. These costs run €80-€180 daily for most restaurants, distributed across all service hours including slow ones.

Insurance, licenses, maintenance, cleaning supplies, and administrative costs spread across every hour you're open. These fixed costs make empty seats during service hours painfully expensive.

Opportunity Cost of Empty Capacity

Beyond direct costs, empty seats represent lost opportunity that never returns. A table empty during Tuesday lunch can never be sold again. That specific revenue opportunity disappears forever once the service period ends.

Irish restaurants typically operate at 35-55% capacity during slow periods. A 20-table restaurant might fill only 7-11 tables during quiet Tuesday lunch, 9-13 empty tables representing complete revenue loss. At average ticket of €28-€42 per table for lunch, those empty tables represent €252-€546 in lost revenue during a single slow service.

Multiply this across slow periods throughout the week and the annual opportunity cost becomes staggering. A restaurant with moderate slow period capacity issues loses €850-€2,100 weekly, or €44,200-€109,200 annually, from seats that simply sit empty when they could generate revenue.

The Perishable Nature of Restaurant Capacity

Restaurant seats are perfectly perishable inventory. You can't save them, store them, or roll them forward. Airlines face identical economics, which is why they obsess over filling every seat through dynamic pricing and last-minute deals.

However, restaurants traditionally lacked tools to manage perishable capacity effectively. You couldn't easily notify potential customers about empty seats, couldn't dynamically adjust pricing or offerings for immediate bookings, and couldn't automate the process of filling capacity gaps.

This left restaurants with only terrible options: accept revenue loss from empty seats, spend heavily on advertising that might or might not work, or manually manage time-consuming social media marketing that produced inconsistent results.

Why Traditional Marketing Fails to Fill Slow Seats

Irish restaurants trying to fill slow periods typically attempt several traditional marketing approaches. Each carries significant drawbacks that make them impractical or ineffective for managing day-to-day capacity issues.

Social Media Posting Problems

Many restaurants try posting on Facebook or Instagram about availability. "Quiet Tuesday, book now and get 10% off!" or "Tables available tonight, call to reserve!" These posts seem logical but rarely work effectively.

The fundamental problem is timing and visibility. You post at 11am about Tuesday lunch availability. Your post enters the social media feed alongside friend updates, news articles, sponsored ads, and posts from the hundreds of other accounts your followers see. The Facebook algorithm decides whether to show your post, typically delivering it to only 3-8% of your followers.

Even followers who see the post might not be thinking about lunch at that moment. They're scrolling during a work break, commuting, or browsing in the evening. Your perfectly timed Tuesday lunch availability message reaches them when they can't act on it.

Creating these posts also requires significant time. Write the copy, select or create an image, post across multiple platforms, check for engagement, respond to comments. This takes 15-25 minutes per post, and you need consistent posting to maintain any effectiveness. Restaurant owners and managers don't have spare hours weekly for manual social media management.

The results rarely justify the effort. A typical availability post reaches 40-120 followers organically, generates 2-8 engagements, and produces 0-2 actual bookings. You spent 20 minutes to fill one table, or often zero tables.

Paid Social Media Advertising Challenges

Frustrated by poor organic reach, some restaurants try paid social media advertising. This introduces different problems that make it impractical for filling immediate capacity gaps.

Minimum advertising spends start at €5-€10 daily. For that spending to make sense, you need to generate bookings that cover the ad cost plus meaningful additional revenue. At €5 daily ad spend for a week (€35), you need to generate at least €100-€140 in additional revenue just to justify the cost, requiring 3-5 filled tables.

Facebook and Instagram ads require setup time: creating ad creative, writing copy, targeting audiences, setting budgets, launching campaigns. Even experienced advertisers need 30-60 minutes to set up a campaign properly. For filling Tuesday lunch, this makes no sense. You're spending an hour Monday evening to create ads that might fill 2-3 tables Tuesday.

Ad performance varies wildly and unpredictably. Some weeks your €10 ad spend fills 6 tables. Other weeks the same ad spend fills zero tables. This inconsistency makes budgeting difficult and results unreliable.

Paid ads also lack urgency. Someone seeing your ad Monday evening might think "I'll book for next week" rather than "I'll go tomorrow for lunch." The lag between seeing the ad and potential booking means you're advertising for general future business rather than specifically filling tomorrow's empty lunch seats.

Email Marketing Limitations

Email marketing to customer databases works well for planned promotions and events but struggles with immediate capacity management. Sending emails requires building campaigns, writing copy, designing layouts, and scheduling sends. This takes 45-90 minutes minimum.

Email open rates average 18-28% for restaurant emails in Ireland, meaning 72-82% of recipients never see your message. Of those who open, click-through rates run 2-5%, and conversion to bookings runs 1-3% of clickers. You're reaching a tiny fraction of your email list with any individual campaign.

Frequency becomes problematic quickly. Send weekly availability emails and subscribers start ignoring them or unsubscribing. Customers don't want constant "we have tables available" emails cluttering their inbox. This limits how often you can use email for capacity management.

Traditional Advertising Complete Mismatch

Radio ads, newspaper advertising, printed flyers, and local publications are completely unsuited to filling immediate capacity gaps. These channels require advance booking, significant minimum spending, broad untargeted audiences, and no ability to drive immediate action.

A radio ad costs €150-€400 for local stations, requires booking days or weeks ahead, reaches thousands of people who aren't thinking about dining at your restaurant, and can't target people who already know and like your restaurant. The economics make no sense for filling tomorrow's lunch service.

How App Notifications Work for Irish Restaurants

App notifications solve the fundamental problems that make traditional marketing ineffective for filling slow seats. They reach customers immediately, target people who already care about your restaurant, cost only when sent, and require minimal ongoing effort after initial setup.

Direct Customer Access

When someone follows your restaurant on an app like Mosey, they've explicitly expressed interest in your business. They want to hear from you, unlike social media where your posts compete with everything else in their feed or email where your messages sit among dozens of daily emails.

App notifications appear directly on their phone screen, not buried in a feed or inbox. The notification shows your restaurant name and message immediately, even if they're not currently using the app. This visibility is dramatically higher than any other marketing channel.

The customer controls notification preferences, opting in to receive updates from restaurants they care about. This opt-in nature means your notifications reach genuinely interested people rather than broad, untargeted audiences.

Perfect Timing Control

Send notifications exactly when you need customers. Tuesday morning at 10:30am, you check bookings and see a quiet lunch ahead. Send a notification at 11am about lunch availability or special offers. Customers receive it immediately when they're starting to think about lunch plans.

Thursday afternoon you notice a quiet evening ahead. Send notifications at 4pm about dinner availability. Customers making evening plans receive your message at the exact moment they're deciding where to eat.

This timing precision is impossible with traditional marketing. Social media algorithms control when posts appear. Email recipients check inbox whenever they choose. Radio ads run at scheduled times regardless of your needs. Only notifications give you direct control over timing.

Targeted Messaging by Customer Segments

Different customers respond to different messages. App notifications let you segment audiences and send tailored messages that resonate with each group.

Target your followers (people who specifically chose to follow your restaurant) with general availability messages. These customers already like your restaurant and just need a reminder or reason to visit during slow periods.

Target previous customers with personalized messages: "We haven't seen you in a while, tables available this Thursday." This personal touch encourages return visits from people who've previously enjoyed your restaurant.

Target location-based audiences with urgent availability: "Passing by Ranelagh? We have tables available right now, stop in for lunch." Customers currently near your restaurant receive relevant immediate opportunities.

Segment by visit frequency, average spending, preferred times, or any customer data you track. Send premium customers exclusive offers. Send lunch regulars weekday availability messages. Send weekend diners Friday-Saturday updates. Tailored messaging dramatically improves response rates.

Cost Control and Transparency

Unlike advertising with minimum spends and uncertain results, notifications cost only when sent. Mosey charges €0.12 per notification to followers and €0.25 to non-followers. This transparent, predictable pricing means you control costs completely.

Send 50 follower notifications to fill Tuesday lunch: €6 total cost. Generate 3-5 bookings (typical response rate 6-10%) averaging €35 per table, producing €105-€175 revenue from €6 spend. The mathematics work overwhelmingly in your favour.

Compare to Facebook ads where €6 might reach 200-400 people (mostly uninterested) with unclear results, or radio ads requiring €150+ minimum spend reaching thousands of irrelevant listeners. Notification costs are minimal and performance is trackable.

Scale spending to your needs. Send 20 notifications for €2.40 or 200 notifications for €24. No minimum spend requirements, no wasted reach to uninterested audiences, no forced budget commitments.

Automation Capabilities

The true power of app notifications comes from automation. Set up rules once, then let the system automatically notify customers when conditions are met.

Capacity-based automation: Automatically send availability notifications when bookings fall below target levels. If Tuesday lunch typically books 15 tables but currently has only 6 booked by 10am Tuesday, trigger automatic notifications to followers about availability and lunch specials.

Time-based automation: Schedule recurring notifications for predictably slow periods. Every Tuesday at 11am, send lunch availability notifications. Every Thursday at 4pm, send dinner availability notifications. Set these once and they run automatically.

Event-driven automation: Trigger notifications based on specific events. When someone cancels a large booking, automatically notify customers about unexpected availability. When weather forecasts predict rain, send notifications about cozy indoor dining.

Performance-based automation: Adjust notification frequency based on results. If Monday night notifications consistently fill 8-10 tables, increase frequency. If Wednesday lunch notifications rarely generate bookings, reduce frequency or adjust messaging.

Automation eliminates the daily time burden of manual marketing. Instead of spending 30-60 minutes daily on social media posts or email campaigns, you invest 1-2 hours monthly reviewing and adjusting automated notification rules.

Measurable Results

Track exactly how notifications perform. See delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversion to bookings. This data shows precisely which notifications work and which need adjustment.

Compare notification performance to other marketing channels. When you spend €12 on Tuesday lunch notifications and generate €245 in additional revenue, you can compare this to €35 Facebook ad spend that generated €140 revenue. The performance data guides budget allocation.

Test different messages, timing, and offers. Send half your audience "tables available, book now" and half "tables available, 10% off lunch bookings." See which performs better. Use winning messages going forward. This continuous optimization improves results over time.

The measurement capability means you're never guessing about effectiveness. You know exactly what notifications cost, what revenue they generate, and whether they're worth continuing.

Setting Up Notification Marketing for Your Irish Restaurant

Implementing automated notification marketing requires initial setup, but the process is straightforward and pays dividends immediately through filled seats and reduced marketing time.

Month One: Foundation Building

Week 1-2: Platform setup and customer base building

Create your restaurant profile on Mosey, complete with photos, menu, location, hours, and description. The profile becomes your base for attracting followers who'll receive your notifications.

Encourage existing customers to follow your restaurant on the app. Add small table cards asking customers to follow for exclusive offers and availability updates. Train staff to mention: "Follow us on Mosey for special offers and availability alerts."

Add follow prompts to your social media bios, email signatures, and website. "Get exclusive offers and last-minute availability by following us on Mosey." Make following easy and clearly communicate the benefit.

Week 3: First manual notifications

Before automating, send a few manual notifications to learn the system and see results. Pick a predictably slow period and send availability notifications to your followers.

Try different messages:

• "Quiet Tuesday, tables available for lunch, walk-ins welcome"

• "Thursday dinner tables available, book now for 15% off"

• "Lovely evening for dinner, we have availability tonight"

Track which messages generate best response. Note the optimal timing for sending notifications relative to the service period.

Week 4: Analyse and plan automation

Review your first manual notifications. Calculate cost per booking generated. Identify which slow periods benefit most from notifications. Determine your optimal notification timing, frequency, and messaging.

Plan automation rules based on this data. Decide which slow periods to automate, what triggers to use, and what messages to send.

Month Two: Automation Implementation

Week 1-2: Set up automated rules

Create capacity-based automation: "If Tuesday lunch bookings fewer than 12 by 10am Tuesday, send availability notification to followers at 11am."

Create time-based automation: "Every Wednesday at 10:30am, send weekend dinner availability notification to previous customers."

Start with 2-3 automated rules for your most problematic slow periods. Don't automate everything immediately; build automation gradually based on results.

Week 3-4: Monitor and adjust

Watch automated notifications closely. Check whether they trigger appropriately, whether customers respond well, and whether they fill seats as expected.

Adjust timing if needed. If 11am Tuesday notifications generate few bookings, try 10am or 11:30am instead. Small timing shifts can significantly impact results.

Adjust frequency if needed. If weekly notifications to the same audience become less effective, reduce to every-other-week or add more variety to messaging.

Month Three: Optimization and Expansion

Week 1-2: Message testing

Test different notification messages for the same slow period. Send half your audience message A and half message B. Compare response rates.

Test offers versus plain availability: "Tables available for lunch" versus "15% off lunch bookings today." See whether discounts improve response enough to justify the margin reduction.

Test urgency messaging: "Limited tables available" versus "Plenty of availability for lunch." Urgency might improve response for some audiences but feel pushy to others.

Week 3-4: Expand automation

Add automation rules for additional slow periods. If your initial automated Tuesday lunch notifications work well, add Thursday lunch automation, Sunday evening automation, or whatever other slow periods need filling.

Create special event automation: "When rain forecasted for weekend, send Friday notification about perfect weather to enjoy our cosy dining room."

Build seasonal automation: "During January-February, increase notification frequency to maintain traffic during slow season."

Ongoing: Maintenance and Refinement

Monthly review (30-60 minutes monthly)

Check notification performance data. Calculate total spending, revenue generated, bookings created, and ROI from notifications.

Identify underperforming notifications. If Saturday lunch notifications rarely generate bookings, either adjust messaging or stop sending them entirely.

Identify opportunities. If Monday dinner notifications consistently generate strong bookings, consider increasing frequency or expanding to similar time periods.

Quarterly strategy updates (2-3 hours quarterly)

Review seasonal patterns. Adjust automation rules for summer tourist season versus winter local season.

Test new notification strategies. Try location-based targeting, different customer segments, or new messaging approaches.

Compare notification marketing to other channels. Calculate cost per booking for notifications versus social media ads, email campaigns, and other marketing activities. Allocate budget to best-performing channels.

Why Mosey's Notification System Works for Irish Restaurants

Multiple platforms offer notification capabilities, but Mosey's system is specifically designed for Irish food businesses, addressing the unique challenges Irish restaurants face when trying to fill capacity gaps.

Food-Focused Audience

Mosey attracts customers specifically interested in food and dining experiences. Unlike general social media where your restaurant competes with all content types, Mosey users open the app specifically to discover dining options, find restaurants, or check updates from favourite food businesses.

This focused audience means higher engagement rates. Someone opening Mosey is thinking about food, making them far more likely to respond to availability notifications than someone scrolling Facebook who sees your post among baby photos and political arguments.

Irish customers use Mosey to solve dining decisions. When they receive your notification about Tuesday lunch availability, they're receiving it on a platform they trust for food recommendations, not as an interruption during unrelated activities.

Irish Market Focus

Mosey understands Irish dining patterns, seasonal challenges, and local market conditions. The platform is built specifically for Irish food businesses rather than being a generic international tool awkwardly applied to Irish restaurants.

Pricing reflects Irish market conditions (€0.12 per follower notification rather than UK or US pricing structures). Features address Irish restaurant challenges like January-February slow seasons, bank holiday impact, and tourist season variability.

Customer support understands Irish restaurant operations. Questions about notification strategy for Paddy's weekend, strategies for January cash flow, or managing summer tourist versus winter local patterns receive answers from people who understand Irish market conditions.

Complete Restaurant Platform

Notification marketing works best when integrated with other restaurant tools. Mosey combines notifications with reservations, vouchers, events, promotions, menu management, and customer data in one platform.

Send notifications about reservation availability for tonight, see bookings increase in real-time, track which customers book from notifications. This integrated experience beats piecing together separate notification service, reservation system, and analytics platform from different vendors.

Use customer data from reservations and vouchers to segment notification audiences. Target customers who book frequently for lunch versus those who prefer dinner. Target customers who've previously redeemed vouchers with special offers. This data integration enables sophisticated targeting impossible when systems are separate.

Transparent, Fair Pricing

Mosey charges €0.12 per follower notification and €0.25 per non-follower notification. No hidden fees, no monthly minimums, no forced spending commitments. Pay only for notifications actually sent.

This transparent pricing means you control costs completely. Send 50 notifications for €6, 200 notifications for €24, or 500 notifications for €60. Scale spending to match your needs and results.

Compare to social media advertising requiring minimum daily spends, complex bidding systems, and uncertain costs. Or email marketing platforms charging €30-€80 monthly regardless of usage. Mosey's notification pricing is straightforward and affordable for restaurants of any size.

No Followers Required for Other Features

Unlike social media platforms where everything requires building follower counts, Mosey's core directory, search, and discovery features work immediately without any followers. Customers searching for restaurants in your area find your listing regardless of follower count.

This means you benefit from Mosey even while building your notification audience. Customers discover you through search, and you simultaneously build followers who'll receive future notifications. The platform provides value at every stage rather than being useless until you've built a large audience.

Notification Marketing Best Practices for Irish Restaurants

Implementing notification marketing successfully requires following proven practices that maximize response rates while maintaining positive customer relationships.

Frequency Balance

The most common mistake is sending notifications too frequently. Customers who receive notifications several times weekly start ignoring them or unfollowing your restaurant entirely.

Recommended frequencies:

• Daily notifications: Never appropriate for most restaurants

• 2-3 weekly notifications: Maximum for busy restaurants with highly engaged audiences

• 1-2 weekly notifications: Appropriate for most restaurants during slow seasons

• 2-4 monthly notifications: Appropriate for steady business using notifications occasionally

• Special occasions only: Appropriate for busy restaurants rarely facing capacity issues

Start conservatively. If customers respond well and engagement stays strong, you can gradually increase frequency. It's far easier to increase frequency than to recover from annoying customers with too many notifications.

Timing Optimization

Send notifications with enough lead time for customers to act but close enough to the service period that the urgency is real.

Lunch availability notifications:

• Optimal send time: 10:30am-11:30am for same-day lunch

• Minimum lead time: 90 minutes before service

• Maximum lead time: Same-day only; don't send night-before lunch notifications

Dinner availability notifications:

• Optimal send time: 2pm-4pm for same-day dinner

• Minimum lead time: 3 hours before service

• Maximum lead time: Same-day only; don't send morning notifications for evening service

Weekend availability notifications:

• Optimal send time: Thursday 4pm-6pm or Friday morning

• Minimum lead time: 24 hours before service

• Maximum lead time: 48 hours before service

Test timing for your specific audience. Some audiences respond better to earlier notifications allowing planning time. Others respond better to last-minute urgency.

Message Quality

Notification text appears on customer lock screens, competing with messages from friends, family, and other apps. Your message must be clear, compelling, and concise.

Effective notification messages:

• "Tuesday lunch tables available. Book now for 15% off." (Clear, specific, benefit)

• "Rainy evening perfect for cosy dinner. Tables available tonight." (Contextual, atmospheric, clear)

• "Quiet Thursday, we'd love to see you. Dinner bookings available." (Personal, warm, clear)

Ineffective notification messages:

• "Special offer available, check it out!" (Vague, no specifics, no clear action)

• "We're open for business as usual today." (No benefit, no reason to act)

• "Support local business, dine with us soon." (Guilt-based, no specific timing, weak call-to-action)

Keep messages under 100 characters when possible. Longer messages get truncated on lock screens, losing impact.

Offer Strategy

Notifications combined with specific offers generate better response rates than availability-only notifications. However, offer sustainability matters.

Sustainable offers:

• 10-15% discounts on slow periods (manageable margin impact)

• Included appetizer or dessert (controlled cost, feels valuable)

• Premium wine pairing at regular wine price (perceived value, minimal cost)

• Early booking bonuses (book by 2pm for dinner, get 10% off)

Unsustainable offers:

• 30-50% discounts (destroys margin, trains customers to expect deep discounts)

• Free mains or expensive included items (costs exceed benefit)

• Buy-one-get-one on high-cost items (margin elimination)

Calculate offer profitability before implementation. A 15% discount on a €35 lunch costs you €5.25 per customer but generates €29.75 revenue from an empty seat that would have generated €0 otherwise. The €29.75 is pure gain even after the discount.

Segmentation Strategies

Different customer segments respond to different messages and offers. Advanced notification strategies segment audiences for better results.

Segment by visit frequency:

• Regular customers: Focus on availability and new menu items

• Occasional customers: Include moderate offers to encourage visits

• Lapsed customers: Include stronger offers and "we miss you" messaging

Segment by visit timing:

• Lunch regulars: Send lunch availability notifications only

• Dinner regulars: Send dinner availability notifications only

• Weekend diners: Send Friday-Saturday availability notifications

Segment by spending level:

• High-spenders: Send premium offers and exclusive experiences

• Average-spenders: Send standard availability and offers

• Budget-conscious: Send value-focused offers and specials

Build segments gradually based on customer data. Start with simple follower versus non-follower segmentation, then add sophistication as you gather more data.

Performance Tracking

Measure notification effectiveness consistently to guide future strategy.

Track these metrics:

• Delivery rate (percentage of notifications successfully delivered)

• Open rate (percentage of recipients opening notifications)

• Click-through rate (percentage clicking through to book or view details)

• Conversion rate (percentage who actually book)

• Revenue generated per notification sent

• Cost per booking acquired through notifications

Use data to guide decisions:

• If open rates below 25%, improve message quality or send frequency

• If click-through rates below 15%, improve offers or timing

• If conversion rates below 5%, examine booking friction or offer appeal

• If cost per booking exceeds €3-€5, refine targeting or messaging

Review performance monthly. Compare month-over-month trends and adjust strategy based on what the data shows.

Frequently Asked Questions About App Notification Marketing for Irish Restaurants

Q: How much do app notifications cost compared to social media advertising?

A: Mosey charges €0.12 per notification to followers and €0.25 to non-followers, with complete cost control and no minimum spending. Sending 50 follower notifications costs €6 total. Facebook ads require €5-€10 daily minimum spending for any meaningful reach, costing €35-€70 weekly minimum. Notification marketing typically costs 80-90% less than social media advertising while generating better results because you're reaching people who specifically chose to follow your restaurant rather than broad, uninterested audiences.

Q: How many followers do I need before notification marketing becomes effective?

A: Irish restaurants typically see meaningful results with 300+ followers or opt-ins. At this level, sending notifications to your full follower base reaches enough people to generate 3-8 bookings from slow period notifications. Below 200 followers, results are limited by small audience size. Focus first on building your follower base through table cards, staff mentions, social media promotion, and website links before investing heavily in notification campaigns. However, even with 100-200 followers, you can generate 1-3 bookings per notification, which still represents positive ROI for filling otherwise-empty seats.

Q: Will customers get annoyed by receiving restaurant notifications?

A: Customers control notification preferences and opt in to receive updates from restaurants they follow. This opt-in nature means recipients want to hear from you. However, frequency matters tremendously. Limit notifications to 1-2 weekly maximum for most restaurants, focusing on genuinely valuable information like availability during popular times or special offers. Customers unfollow or disable notifications when restaurants send excessive messages with low value. Respect your notification privilege by sending thoughtfully and sparingly.

Q: Can I automate notifications to save time on daily marketing?

A: Yes, automation is the primary benefit of notification marketing. Set up rules once that automatically send notifications based on capacity levels, timing, or other triggers. For example, automatically send Tuesday lunch availability notifications every Tuesday at 11am if bookings are below your target level. Mosey's automation tools let you create sophisticated rules that run without daily manual intervention. After initial setup, notification marketing requires only 30-60 minutes monthly for performance review and adjustment, compared to 30-60 minutes daily for manual social media marketing.

Q: How quickly do customers respond to availability notifications?

A: Response patterns vary by notification timing and meal period. Same-day lunch notifications sent at 11am generate 60-75% of responses within 2 hours, with bookings made for immediate or same-day lunch. Dinner notifications sent at 3-4pm generate responses throughout the afternoon, with 50-65% of bookings made within 4 hours. Weekend availability notifications sent Thursday or Friday generate steady responses over 24-48 hours. The notification creates immediate awareness that drives action within a compressed timeframe, far faster than traditional marketing that might generate responses over days or weeks.

Fill Your Empty Seats Starting Today

Irish restaurants lose €44,200-€109,200 annually from empty seats during slow periods. Traditional marketing to fill these seats costs significant money and time while producing inconsistent results. Social media posts reach only 3-8% of followers. Email campaigns take hours to create and send. Paid advertising requires substantial minimum spending with unpredictable outcomes.

App notification marketing solves every problem that makes traditional marketing ineffective for capacity management. Reach customers directly when you need them. Target people who already chose to follow your restaurant. Send immediately when capacity gaps appear. Pay only €0.12 per follower notification with no minimum spending. Automate the process so notifications send without daily manual effort.

Over 180 Irish restaurants now use automated notifications to fill slow seats, generating €340-€1,200 additional weekly revenue from previously empty capacity. The setup takes 2-4 weeks, the cost is minimal, and the results are measurable and consistent.

Mosey's notification system was built specifically for Irish food businesses, understanding your seasonal challenges, local market conditions, and operational needs. The platform integrates notifications with reservations, vouchers, promotions, and customer data, creating a complete restaurant management solution rather than adding another disconnected marketing tool.

Stop losing revenue from empty seats during slow periods. Start using automated notification marketing to fill capacity exactly when you need customers, without spending hours on manual marketing or hundreds of euros on ineffective advertising.

Create your free Mosey account today and build the notification marketing system that keeps your restaurant busy even during traditionally slow periods.