"Installation Table ENSO L'asymetrie du calme" is a restaurant that delivers a "memorable dining experience" through its dedication to Hokuriku ingredients and the aesthetic of a space renovated from a former sewing school. The restaurant is supported by a wide customer base centered on guests in their 40s and 50s, with overseas reservations — particularly from Europe — rising sharply in recent years. At the same time, the restaurant had been facing on-site challenges, including the collection of cancellation fees and the difficulty of managing seating across multiple reservation platforms. With Respo, the restaurant has strengthened its cancellation prevention measures and centralized its reservation management, while leveraging Respo as a "customizable reservation management foundation" that reflects each restaurant's unique operational rules.
Challenges Before Adopting Respo
ENSO had been facing the following on-site challenges.
■ The burden of handling cancellations
- The previously used reservation platforms often had no built-in mechanism for collecting cancellation fees, or were designed in ways that allowed guests to cancel too easily
- When cancellations did occur, there were many cases where the restaurant could not reach the guest, or the call was hung up on
- As a result, it had become routine for cancellation fees that should have been collected to go unrecovered
■ Inefficient reservation management caused by using multiple platforms
- The restaurant used multiple reservation platforms in parallel, and had no choice but to manage seating by allocating seat counts to each platform
- As a result, the restaurant's overall seating allocation was inefficient, and reservations that could otherwise have been accepted sometimes had to be declined
- Switching between the admin consoles of each platform also created significant overhead and added to the burden on the floor
Key Features of Respo
"Respo" is an all-in-one platform for restaurants provided by Hello Inc. It brings reservation book, channel manager, POS, payment terminals, and mobile ordering together on a single platform, and can be flexibly combined to match each restaurant's scale and business format.
■ What Respo Offers
- Reservation book: Integrates with multiple reservation platforms, eliminating manual transcription from each platform
- Channel manager: Centrally manages inventory across the restaurant's own site and other reservation platforms
- POS / Payment terminals: Complete checkout and payment in a single device, streamlining store operations
- Mobile ordering: Enables guests to order from their smartphone or tablet, reducing wait times
- Guest information management: Accumulates visit history, preferences, allergy information and more, supporting tailored service for returning guests
Outcomes After Adopting Respo
■ Outcome 1: Reducing cancellations and eliminating lost opportunities through centralized reservation management Thanks to Respo's cancellation fee pre-authorization mechanism, guests now have a greater sense of responsibility for their reservations, and no-show cancellations — where guests book but never visit — have decreased significantly. When cancellations do occur, the restaurant now has a system in place to reliably collect cancellation fees that previously went unrecovered, protecting revenue opportunities. In addition, by managing inventory and seating across multiple reservation platforms in one place, the constraints created by allocating maximum reservation counts to each platform have been removed, creating an environment in which the restaurant can maximize the reservations it is able to accept.
■ Outcome 2: A "customizable reservation management" system that adapts to the restaurant's unique operations
ENSO uses a unique operational style that combines its own paper reservation book — which the restaurant wants to keep — with Respo's web-based reservation book. Because Respo allows reservation statuses to be customized on the restaurant's side, ENSO has been able to set up its own rules — for example, marking reservations awaiting answers to critical questions such as allergies as "Awaiting Confirmation" — and color-codes them accordingly. This has created an operation in which the status of every reservation is instantly visible to all staff.
■ Outcome 3: Deep use of guest information to support the "memorable dining experience" ENSO offers a daily omakase course, and to deliver a different experience to returning guests with every visit, the restaurant makes extensive use of guest information notes. By recording everything from past course content, conversations, drinks, and pairing wines — and attaching photos — ENSO is able to provide hospitality grounded in each individual guest's previous experiences. The cancellation fee pre-authorization function has also contributed to building the perception of ENSO as "a restaurant worth visiting even with a reservation fee."
Comments from Installation Table ENSO L'asymetrie du calme
We received the following comments from the representative at the restaurant.
"We feel that, through our reservation system, we have been able to design the 'value of visiting.' With the cancellation fee pre-authorization in place, especially for our overseas guests, I sense it has led to the perception that we are 'a restaurant worth visiting even with a reservation fee.' The number of guests who book and never show up has also decreased considerably."
"Respo always responds properly, which gives us peace of mind. We are grateful that they address our requests, even step by step, and the level of support is excellent — that is a point we would happily recommend to others in the industry."
Comment from Yuki Hariguchi, Representative Director, Hello Inc.
"Installation Table ENSO L'asymetrie du calme is a wonderful restaurant pursuing a one-of-a-kind world view in Kanazawa, drawing on Hokuriku ingredients and a building rich in history. ENSO's words — 'through our reservation system, we have been able to design the value of visiting' — felt symbolic of the future of restaurant operations. We hope that Respo will be more than just a tool for efficiency, and will instead grow alongside each restaurant's world view as time goes on. In addition, by strengthening multilingual support across our Dining business, we will continue to help ensure that ENSO's appeal reaches guests across borders."
About the Case Study Article
The full story has been published on the official Respo website as an interview with Installation Table ENSO L'asymetrie du calme. We invite you to read it.
▶ Case Study Article: "Reservation Management That Supports a 'Memorable Dining Experience': Why ENSO Chose Respo" URL:https://respo.autoreserve.com/ja-jp/cases/enso
