Tavola Group operates four Italian-American restaurants across Brooklyn—two in Williamsburg, one in Park Slope, and one in DUMBO. They've been a neighborhood fixture since 2016, known for handmade pasta, natural wines, and the kind of loud, warm atmosphere that makes you forget to check your phone.
Business was good on weekends. Fridays and Saturdays they'd turn tables three times. But Monday through Thursday? A different story. Weekday occupancy hovered around 52%, which meant empty tables, underutilized staff, and tight margins on the nights that should have been carrying their weight.
The Challenge: Empty Tables on Weeknights
Tavola had tried the usual playbook. Happy hour specials. Instagram stories. Email newsletters (open rate: 14%). A loyalty punch card. Third-party reservation platforms that took a cut of every cover. Some of it helped. None of it moved the needle enough.
The core problem was reach and timing. By the time someone saw an Instagram post about Tuesday's special, they'd already made dinner plans. Email newsletters went out Monday morning and got buried by afternoon. And third-party platforms were good for discovery but terrible for building direct relationships with regulars.
— Daniela Ferraro, Owner, Tavola Group
The Strategy: Conversational SMS
Tavola Group partnered with Shymo in September 2023 with a specific goal: use SMS to fill weeknight seats. They didn't want a broadcast-only approach—blasting the same message to everyone felt wrong for a restaurant that prided itself on personal relationships. Instead, they built a conversational SMS program that felt more like texting with a friend who happens to know the specials.
Here's what they set up:
List building: Table-top cards at every seat with a QR code and the text: "Text TAVOLA to 55123 for VIP specials, secret menu items, and last-minute reservation alerts." They also added the keyword to their receipt footers, Instagram bio, and a pop-up on their website. Within 8 weeks, they had 4,200 subscribers across all four locations.
Location-based segments: Subscribers were segmented by their preferred location (based on which restaurant they signed up at) and by visit frequency. This meant the Williamsburg regulars got Williamsburg-specific messages, and the Park Slope crowd got theirs.
The Tuesday–Thursday Playbook: Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 3 PM, Tavola sent a location-specific text with one of three rotating formats:
- "Tonight's special" — A sneak peek at a dish not on the regular menu. "Chef's doing a wild mushroom pappardelle tonight. Limited to 30 plates. Want us to save you one? Reply YES + party size."
- "Last-minute table alert" — "We just had a cancellation—table for 2 at 7:30 tonight at our DUMBO spot. Want it? Reply BOOK."
- "Friend of the house" offer — "Tavola fam only: complimentary glass of wine with any pasta tonight. Just mention 'text club' to your server."
The Conversational Piece
What made Tavola's program special wasn't just the messages—it was the two-way interaction. Shymo's conversational AI handled the back-and-forth:
When a subscriber replied "YES 4" to a specials message, the system confirmed: "You're in! Table for 4 at Tavola Williamsburg tonight. What time works—7, 7:30, or 8?" The subscriber replied "730" and got a confirmation with the address and a reminder at 5 PM.
No phone calls. No apps. No OpenTable fees. Just a text conversation that took 30 seconds.
For more complex requests—dietary restrictions, special occasions, large parties—the system seamlessly handed off to a human (usually the host or manager) who continued the text conversation. Subscribers never had to switch channels.
— Daniela Ferraro, Owner, Tavola Group
The Loyalty Layer
Tavola added a simple loyalty program on top of their SMS channel. Instead of punch cards or apps, it worked entirely through text:
- Every visit tracked by the host entering the subscriber's phone number at the POS
- After every 5th visit, an automatic text: "You've hit 5 visits, {name}! 🎉 Your next appetizer is on us. Just show this text to your server."
- Birthday texts with a complimentary dessert offer
- Anniversary of first visit: "It's been a year since your first dinner with us. Come celebrate—first round is on the house tonight."
The loyalty program required zero app downloads, zero new accounts, zero passwords. It lived entirely in the channel customers were already using. Redemption rates hit 72%—compared to the industry average of 15–20% for app-based restaurant loyalty programs.
The Results
Over the first five months (September 2023 – January 2024), the numbers told a clear story:
- Weekday occupancy: Rose from 52% to 86% across all four locations
- Tuesday–Thursday covers: Increased by 65%, with Wednesdays seeing the biggest jump (78%)
- Average response rate to SMS: 41% (subscribers replying to messages)
- Reservation-via-text rate: 34% of all weeknight reservations now come through SMS
- Third-party platform costs: Reduced by $2,400/month as more reservations went direct
- Additional monthly revenue attributed to SMS: $18,000 across all locations
- Opt-out rate: 0.6% per month—remarkably low, reflecting the high value subscribers got from the channel
The "tonight's special" messages were the strongest performers. When the message included a specific dish and a limited quantity ("30 plates"), reply rates exceeded 50%. Scarcity + specificity + timing was the formula.
Scaling to Multiple Locations
One of Tavola's concerns before launching was management complexity across four locations. Each restaurant has different specials, different capacity, different staff. How do you run a personalized SMS program without it becoming a full-time job?
The answer was Shymo's multi-location management:
- Location-specific segments meant each restaurant's messages only went to their subscribers
- Templates with location variables let the central marketing team create one message framework and customize per location
- Manager access let each restaurant's host/manager handle real-time conversations for their location without seeing other locations' data
- Centralized reporting gave Daniela a single dashboard showing performance across all four spots
Total time investment: about 2 hours per week across the entire group. One person writes the messages, each location manager handles their replies. The automations (loyalty, birthday, reminders) run themselves.
Key Takeaways
- SMS works for local businesses, not just DTC ecommerce. Tavola's success proves that restaurants, retail shops, salons, and other brick-and-mortar businesses can drive real revenue through text.
- Two-way > one-way. The conversational approach—where customers can reply and book directly through text—drove dramatically higher engagement than broadcast-only messaging.
- Timing is the killer advantage. Reaching someone at 3 PM about tonight's dinner is infinitely more effective than an email they see tomorrow morning.
- Loyalty doesn't need an app. Text-based loyalty programs have higher redemption rates because there's zero friction. No downloads, no logins, no cards to carry.
- Start with one specific goal. Tavola didn't try to do everything at once. They focused on one metric—weekday occupancy—and built their entire SMS strategy around moving that number.
Tavola Group is now exploring SMS-based waitlist management and event promotion for their private dining spaces. The channel that started as a weeknight experiment has become central to how they run their business.