By Tam Yu Ling

If you've ever tried calling a popular restaurant for a booking during the festive season, you'd know that it's often a tedious, frustrating process.

Restaurant operators may be so up to their necks in unfinished work that phonelines are often left unattended.

Worse still, there are some who will make you wait for your table even when you have reservations.

The launch of online restaurant reservation services could very well fill this service gap.

Take The Chope Group for example, so named after the Singlish catchphrase which means 'to reserve'.

Since its launch in April this year, it has served over 150,000 diners and sees over a thousand unique visitors to its website daily.

One reason that could account for the rising popularity of online restaurant reservation services such as Chope's could be that diners can utilise the online platform free of charge, just as how they need not pay additional charges in order to book a table through the phone.

Restaurants however, do need to pay a fee to get onto Chope's network.

From the restaurant operator's perspective, the benefits of using Chope's services seem to outweigh the costs, if take-up rates are anything to go by.

When Chope first started, only nine restaurants took up its service.

Now, a quick browse through its website shows an extensive list of 72 restaurants under its network, serving a variety of cuisines ranging from Japanese to Italian, among others.

'More than just managing tables, Chope helps us manage our customers,' said Wee Teng Wen, managing partner of The Lo & Behold Group, which operates dining destinations such as The White Rabbit and OverEasy.

One way by which Chope does this is through the use of its table management system (TMS).

Partner restaurants which utilise the TMS can now abandon the traditional pen-and-paper diary that was once integral in running front-of-house operations.

Instead, the computerised technology allows seat management to be synchronised in real time, hence offering better seat utilisation and enhanced customer service, which benefits the bottomlines of its partner restaurants.

But the journey for Chope does not end here as it continues to harbour big ambitions.

Just last month, it raised $1.1 million in Series A capital to accelerate the rollout of its TMS and online reservations platform in the region.

The investment is made by Innosight Ventures, a venture capital fund founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.

For Chope CEO Arrif Ziaudeen, the investment has come at a timely period as the firm plans to increase its presence in the local market.

Said Mr Ziaudeen: 'For now, the focus is on growing our presence in Singapore as we believe there is a large market here for us to tap into.'

This article was first published in The Business Times.