As VIP customers (the entire restaurant knew us both on a first name basis, we always tipped generously [e.g. $20 on $40 of food], we often received preferential service from staff. One of our waiters was actually a young man with a budding tech interest, who, after considerable encouragement, mentorship, and a quality boot camp some of my former coworkers enjoyed, is now a software engineer making several times more income than he made as a waiter.
We were very pleased with this arrangement in all but one way: while we could talk to several of our waiter friends who were staff members of the restaurant to get a table without a reservation even when it was 1 table short of being packed, it often was packed, or our waiter friends were not working that night, and we did not like waiting in a noisy, crowded lobby.
I picked apart the reservation website and found a very simple, wide-open API. I quickly hacked together a script to make a reservation with a single GET request to my own site, with reservation options in URL parameters, then created Samsung Routines such that when I arrived within 100 feet of my friend's house between 3pm and 9pm, it would automatically send a properly formatted GET request to my website, which in turn made a properly formatted POST to the API, and then it would also immediately respond to the incoming text confirming the reservation. Before I'd even made it to his front door, we'd have an ETA, so we could decide on whether to start a movie, play some split screen diablo, etc. I'd then get a text a short time later, and we'd leave for TRH. Upon arrival, we'd walk up to the counter, mention our reservation was called up, and proceed to be seated immediately regardless of how busy it was, or whether any of our waiter friends were working that night.
DIY VIP Reservation system :)