2 RTC Restaurants Got Special Devices From Boston Properties

RESTON, VA — Two restaurants at Reston Town Center have been provided with special tablets specifically to allow staff to check in customers so they won't have to use the ParkRTC app.

Boston Properties provided Mon Ami Gabi and PassionFish, and only those two restaurants, with a tablet of some sort that has been programmed so that a staffer can enter a customer's license plate to begin a session of the garage without requiring the customer to download ParkRTC.

Kathy Walsh of the Fallston Group, which represented Boston Properties up until recently, confirmed the existence of the tablets to Patch last week.

"The tablet is an example of ongoing modifications and enhancements to the technology at Reston Town Center based on customer feedback," she said in an email. "Boston Properties will be announcing additional modifications in the near future."

Those additional modifications turned out to be new Pay & Park kiosks in the garages that allow customers to pay for parking without the app.

A manager at Mon Ami Gabi, who declined to be named, said that Boston Properties provided the tablet to them after an ongoing discussion where "they were finding out different things" over the course of implementing paid parking. Before that, staff and managers were entering customers' license plates manually on their own ParkRTC apps.

Asked whether Mon Ami Gabi would continue to use the tablet even after the kiosks had been installed, the same manager told Patch recently the restaurant didn't wish to comment anymore on the issue.

A representative of PassionFish said they were simply given a device by Boston Properties. "They just dropped it off," he said.

An employee at the restaurant confirmed Wednesday that they would continue to use the tablet to check guests in despite the new kiosks.

Image: Patch staff