Donate to charity and skip the wait in restaurants

A new app, available in the US for now, allows diners to skip to the front of the line for immediate seating in exchange for a charitable donation.

Any chance to support a charitable cause is welcome and in the States, restaurants aren't hiding their support for one of the latest, at least not those that have signed up for "Charity Wait," a new app bringing together the useful and the enjoyable.

In order to be seated immediately diners can grab their smartphones and make a donation. How does it work exactly? As soon as a party arrives, if there is a wait at the restaurant, they will be added to the list on the Smartline app. 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." When they select the donate option, guests are taken to a checkout page and once it is completed they skip to the front of the line for the next available table. The size of the donation is dependent on the size of the party, the length of the wait and the prices at the restaurant but mostly vary between $10 and $35. Sixty percent of the proceeds are donated to the charity of the restaurant's choice, and the remaining 40% are reserved for Smartline.

But what about those that can't or don't want to donate? Smartline says that the "Donate and Skip the Wait" feature works on a first come, first served basis and each restaurant has a certain number of tables reserved for diners who donate so that it doesn't disrupt any other guest's waiting time.

Since launching in April, only 10 restaurants are using the app so far but the company's chief executive, Daniel Reitman, says Charity Wait has already raised "a few thousand dollars" and that there are many other restaurants signed up and ready to join the cause.