App Lets You Skip The Restaurant Wait — For Charity

Give a donation and jump to the front of the line.

Hate waiting in line at your favorite restaurant? Those days could be over. CharityWait, a new app by tech company, SmartLine, allows diners to skip to the front of the line for immediate seating in exchange for a charitable donation, according to The Guardian.

Here's how it works: Restaurants register for the app and when a new party arrives their name is inputted into the system. CharityWait then sends a text to the party's smartphone with an estimate wait time, how many groups are ahead of them, and a prompt to "Donate and Skip the Wait." After clicking the button, a party is given a specific donation amount — determined by the size of the group, length of the wait, prices at the restaurant — between $10 and $35 that will move them to the front of the line.

Jumping the queue doesn't lengthen wait times for diners who choose not to donate. Instead, restaurants keep tables on reserve specifically for CharityWait participants. Sixty percent of the proceeds from donations go to a charity of the restaurant's choice with the other 40 percent going to SmartLine.

Since launching in April, only 10 restaurants are using the app so far but the company's chief executive, Daniel Reitman, says they've already raised "a few thousand dollars." Right now the app is only available in the U.S. SmartLine isn't the only company trying to alleviate restaurant wait times. This week, Google announced an awesome new search feature that reveals the busiest times for stores, restaurants, and other businesses. Clearly the future has arrived.

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