It's Saturday night and you want to kick back from a hard week of work and relax with friends or family. You go to the local casual dining restaurant and find that the front entrance area is so crowded with people that you can barely push your way to the hostess stand. Then you learn that there is an hour and a half wait for a table.

The problem is that it is the weekend and every restaurant worth going to is probably in the same condition...busy, with a long line. So do you go somewhere else and wait in line or do you stay where you are at and wait in line?

A new product called SmartHost Paging from DotLogik Inc solves the long wait time problem that we have all gone through. Restaurants can also provide better service by allowing customers to leave and return when their table is ready.

The customer no longer has to stand in a busy restaurant waiting to be seated for fear they may lose their table if they so much as step outside. With SmartHost Paging, patrons are free to leave the restaurant and take a walk or do some nearby shopping. When their table is ready, they will receive a text message on their cell phone. Merchants can also text the daily specials and soup of the day to the customer's phone.

Customers who opt in to the service can also recieve a text around their birthday or an anniversary to come in for a free dessert.

The host or hostess of the restaurant is better equiped to give estimated wait times based on historical data from days of the week and time of day. This means the customers know when to expect a message.

Along with the paging system, DotLogik has a display that is visible to customers in the waiting area. The monitor is split into two sides. One side will show TV, commercials, specials, sports or whatever is selected. The other side shows who is being seeted and who is next to be seeted. This also keeps customers entertained if you choose to wait for your table.

So the next time you go out to enjoy an evening of dining and you get stuck in a crowded restaurant with an hour and a half wait, think about how nice it would be to have all the convenient features of the SmartHost.