Ande’s payment channel eased accounting processes and drove significant savings.

Two waterfront venues with one of the busiest corporate calendars on the waterfront, and every corporate invoice chased down by the events team. In twelve months the group went from no payment coverage to using Ande’s payment channel on every corporate event, and the savings have compounded every week since. Ande’s virtual concierge also took over handling the same questions about dates and minimums.

About Waterbar and EPIC Steak

Waterbar and EPIC Steak are two waterfront venues on the San Francisco Embarcadero, running one of the busiest corporate dining calendars on the waterfront.

The Challenge

A high-performing events team doing it all themselves.

  • Collections took real effort: The team invoiced and followed up on every corporate event, tracking what had been paid across multiple surfaces.
  • The same three questions: Is the date open, is the Looking Glass Terrace private, what’s the F&B minimum, answered from scratch, every time.
  • Two venues, one calendar apart: When a date was full at one property, handing the guest to the sister venue meant starting the conversation over.
  • No shared customer view: The team knew its regulars by name, but had no single picture of which corporate accounts drove the business.
“I used to spend the first two hours of every day answering the same questions about dates and minimums. The Agent handles those before I open my laptop, so my time goes to the events that are actually happening.”
David HannaPrivate Dining Director, Waterbar

Why Ande

Waterbar and EPIC Steak first began accepting corporate event payments through Ande. Every payment runs through Ande against the reservation, so deposit and balance settle on the same method and finance sees a matched transaction instead of an invoice to chase. After that discipline held for twelve months, Ande’s virtual concierge was installed at Waterbar to answer the availability, room choice, F&B minimum, and Looking Glass Terrace questions that used to fill the events team’s day, stepping back only when there’s a real event to shape.

The Results

Every dollar has been collected in each of the last nineteen weeks, and the team now holds that coverage without thinking about it.

  • 626 leads were handled in 61 days, 70% of them a real conversation with the virtual concierge.
  • 88% of the categorized leads are corporate, and 82% arrive Monday to Thursday.

Related Stories

Altamarea Group

Altamarea runs 88.9% of corporate events on Ande, enjoying real-time payment visibility, clean spend data, and roughly 10 hours a week back for managers.

Saison

Saison Hospitality handled 1,152 leads in 117 days with Ande’s virtual concierge, cross-sold 38 inquiries to sister venues, and saved $57K through Ande’s B2B payment channel.

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