From Pinstripes User to Tripleseat Expert: A Look at Managing ‘Eatertainment’ Events

At Tripleseat, our event management software is built by hospitality professionals, for hospitality professionals. We believe the best way to solve industry pain points is to have a team that has lived them. That’s why many of our team members are former Tripleseat users themselves.

To give you a true insider’s perspective, we sat down with Sarah Bessler, a Regional Account Manager at Tripleseat. Before joining our team, Sarah was the Sales Training Director for Pinstripes, a popular Italian-American bistro with bowling and bocce—a classic “Eatertainment” venue. She shares her experience of leading her team through a crucial software transition and why Tripleseat was the ultimate winner.

The Challenge: Rapid Growth Meets a Legacy System

During Sarah’s four years at Pinstripes, the company was in a period of exciting expansion. She reports, “So when I was there, they had 12 locations, and now they’re growing like crazy.” With this rapid growth, when Sarah was at Pinstriples, their existing event management software couldn’t keep up.

“Pinstripes was really big on being able to track productivity and reporting, especially because they were planning to grow so much,” Sarah explains. “Going into this big growth factor, they wanted to get all the sales teams utilizing the same platform, the same way, at the same time.”

The tipping point came when their legacy platform announced a mandatory, disruptive update. Pinstripes decided that if they had to change anyway, it was the perfect time to find a more innovative and effective solution. Pinstripes was really big about being able to track productivity and reporting, especially because they were planning to grow so much. So Tripleseat really sold itself.

The Switch: A Weekend of Brunch and BEOs

The transition to Tripleseat was hands-on. Without a simple way to migrate data, the sales team came together for a “clean-up party weekend” to manually rebook all upcoming events into the new system.

“We made a weekend out of it with free brunch and games to help ‘band-aid’ that it was a lot of extra work,” Sarah recalls with a laugh. “But because we did that, it served as great training. The team learned how to put everything into the Tripleseat platform, so the adoption process really started there. When we went live that Monday, it was a piece of cake.”

Key Factors That Made Tripleseat the Clear Winner

During their evaluation, several key Tripleseat capabilities stood out for a unique, growing venue like Pinstripes:

• Powerful Reporting & ROI Tracking: Tripleseat offered the robust reporting and sales cycle transparency needed to manage and measure productivity across multiple locations.
• Seamless Integrations: “The capability of having open APIs to customize on a need-to-need basis was really helpful,” Sarah notes. The ability to integrate with other essential software like Salesforce was a major advantage.
• A User-Friendly Platform: As the implementation weekend proved, the platform was intuitive enough for the entire team to learn quickly, ensuring company-wide adoption.

A Game-Changing Feature for Team Communication

When asked about her favorite feature as a user, Sarah didn’t hesitate.

“It was definitely calendar exporting,” she says. “It made communication so easy between FOH and BOH. The chef could look at his calendar—without even needing a Tripleseat login—and know, ‘Okay, we have 200 short ribs needed for tomorrow; I’d better order them today.’ Having that at his fingertips was a game-changer.”

This visibility extended to the front-of-house team, who could check staffing needs and event space setups directly from their phones or iPads, streamlining operations across the entire venue.

Is Your ‘Eatertainment’ Venue Ready to Streamline Events?

Sarah’s experience at Pinstripes shows how the right event management platform can empower a growing business to operate more efficiently. Tripleseat is designed to handle the unique complexities of restaurants, hotels, and unique venues.

Ready to grow your event business? Schedule a Tripleseat demo today to see our powerful features in action.