How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for a restaurant (2026, free to start)
You need your menu with prices and your opening hours, a WhatsApp number on a phone you control, and about ten minutes.
Building and testing the bot is free with a 30 message demo and no card; putting it on WhatsApp runs on the Starter plan at US$29 a month, which opens with a 7 day trial.
September 2026
What this bot does for a restaurant
Five jobs it takes off your team, with the kind of exchange you will actually see in the transcript.
Takes booking requests while the phone is unreachable
Service is exactly when nobody can pick up. It collects date, time, party size and a name, and drops the request into the dashboard for whoever is on the book.
Customertable for 4 tonight around 9?
BotNine works tonight for four. Can I take a name and a number? We hold the table for fifteen minutes, and I will have the floor confirm it to you shortly.
Answers the menu question, with the price
It reads from the menu you uploaded, so it quotes dishes and prices that are current. Change the menu, re-upload it, and every answer changes with it.
Customerhow much is the set lunch and whats on it this week
BotThe set lunch is 18.50 and runs Tuesday to Friday until 4pm: a starter, a main, bread and a drink. This week the mains are hake with peppers, beef cheek, and a wild mushroom risotto.
Handles dietary questions without a guess
It answers from your allergen chart and nothing else. Where the chart does not cover a case, it says so and asks the guest to speak to the floor, which is the only safe answer.
Customeris the risotto gluten free? celiac
BotThe risotto is made without gluten ingredients, but our kitchen is not a gluten-free kitchen and cross-contact is possible. For coeliac disease please tell us when you book so the kitchen can prepare it separately.
Answers hours, location and parking all evening
Kitchen closing time, terrace, the tram stop, whether you are open on Monday. Small questions, answered instantly, and the reason a guest picks you over the place that never replied.
Customerwhat time does the kitchen close on sunday
BotSunday the kitchen serves until 4:30pm and we close at 6pm. Friday and Saturday the kitchen runs to 11:30pm. We are closed all day Monday.
Fields group bookings and private events
It answers the first three questions on a group enquiry, capacity, set menus and deposit, then puts a person on it. The enquiry arrives at your manager already halfway qualified.
Customerdo you do birthdays for 20 people
BotYes. Twenty fits in the back room, which is private for groups from sixteen. Groups over twelve order from a set menu at 34 or 42 per person, and we ask for a 10 per person deposit. Our manager will call to sort the date.
Build it in eight steps
Steps one to five are free and take about ten minutes. Step six is where WhatsApp, and the plan, come in.
Create the account
Open chatbotgen.com and sign up with an email address or a Google account. No card is asked for here, and none is needed for anything in steps one to five.
You should see: The onboarding wizard, open on the template picker.
Pick the Restaurant Host template
Choose Restaurant Host. It loads a starting prompt, three suggested questions and a widget colour written for this kind of business, so you are editing a draft instead of facing an empty box. Every line of it is yours to change.
You should see: A new chatbot in your dashboard with the prompt already filled in.
Train it on material you already have
Open Knowledge and paste your website address; the crawler reads your public pages and turns them into the bot's memory. Then upload the documents you hand people anyway: the current menu, the allergen chart, the set lunch and the private-events sheet.
You should see: Each source moves from processing to trained. A twenty page site is usually done in two or three minutes.
Write down the answers your website never did
Still in Knowledge, open Q&A and add the questions your staff answers on the phone all day. For a restaurant that is usually: whether you have gluten-free bread, how big the terrace is, whether you take groups of twelve, and how late the kitchen serves. Two sentences per answer is enough; the model writes the rest in its own words.
You should see: Each pair listed as its own source, trained within seconds.
Test it before anyone else does
Use the preview chat on the chatbot page and ask what a real customer asks. Start with "Do you have vegan options and can I book for six on Friday?" Then ask the same thing badly, with a typo and no punctuation, because that is how it will arrive.
You should see: A correct answer with the source it came from. Wrong or vague? Fix the source, not the prompt. Your free demo covers 30 messages, which is enough for this.
Connect WhatsApp by scanning a QR code
Connect your existing WhatsApp number in about a minute by scanning a QR, with no Meta Business verification. Open the chatbot's WhatsApp tab, press Connect, and a QR code appears. On the phone that owns the number, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Linked devices, Link a device, and scan it. No Meta Business account, no verification form, no approval queue. This step runs on the Starter plan, US$29 a month, opening with a 7 day trial.
You should see: The status flips to Connected within a few seconds, and the next customer message is answered on your own number. Keep that phone charged and online, exactly as it already sits on your counter.
Decide when a person takes over
The floor manager should take over for any group over eight, any allergy that goes beyond the chart, and anything that sounds like a complaint. You do not need a dashboard for this. If you answer a customer yourself from the linked phone, the bot records your message, steps back from that conversation for 30 minutes, and each further reply of yours pushes the pause forward. It resumes quietly, without announcing itself.
You should see: Your own replies appearing in the conversation history in the dashboard.
Go live, then read the first fifty conversations
Put the number on your website, your Google Business profile and your Instagram bio. Then read the transcripts. Every question the bot did not have an answer for yet is one Q&A pair away from being answered forever, and the first week is where the whole quality of the thing gets decided.
You should see: A Conversations tab filling up, and a growing share of messages answered end to end without you.
What to feed it
A bot is only as good as the material behind it. These are the sources that answer the most messages for a restaurant, in the order worth doing them.
The current menu with prices
As a PDF or a page on your site. Re-upload it the day the menu changes, because a bot quoting last season's prices is a complaint waiting at the table.
The allergen chart
Dish by dish. This is the one document where being vague is not an option, and where the bot must be told to defer to staff.
Hours, including the kitchen's
Opening hours and last orders are different numbers and guests ask for both. Add holiday closures and the day off.
The group and events sheet
Minimum party size, set menus, deposit, private room capacity, whether you allow cake or decorations.
How to find you
The street, the nearest metro or tram, parking, whether the terrace is covered and whether it is heated in winter.
Your booking rules
How long you hold a table, whether you take walk-ins, the cancellation policy, and whether children and dogs are welcome.
Set it up so customers trust it
Three settings that separate a bot people keep writing to from one they stop trusting. Each is a line in the prompt, and each one is a minute of work.
Route these to your team
- Let whoever holds the book confirm the table. The bot captures the name, the number and the party size, so the callback takes ten seconds.
- Route coeliac and severe allergies to the floor. The bot reports your allergen chart and asks the guest to flag it when booking, which is what your kitchen needs anyway.
- Keep deposits and card details in your own booking flow.
- Let the kitchen agree substitutions. The bot serves the menu you uploaded, priced the way you priced it.
It answers in your customer's language
It answers in the language the guest writes in, across the thirteen the model handles well. For a restaurant in a tourist city that is the difference between a booking and a silence, and no one on your floor has to translate a menu at 10pm.
Hand the conversation to a person when
- Any group over eight, or any private-room enquiry.
- A coeliac, nut or shellfish allergy, or anything the chart does not cover.
- A complaint about a meal, a bill or a booking that went wrong.
What people ask before they build one
Does it actually book the table, or just take the request?
It takes the request and puts it in front of the person who owns the book, with the name, the number, the time and the party size already there. That is deliberate: only your floor knows that table nine is turning late. What it removes is the missed call, the voicemail and the guest who booked elsewhere while waiting for one.
Do I need a Meta Business account or the official WhatsApp API?
No. You connect by scanning a QR code from the phone that owns the number, the same way WhatsApp Web does. There is no Meta Business verification, no approval queue and no per-message fee.
The menu changes every week. Is that a problem?
Upload the new one and delete the old source. Retraining takes seconds, and it is one action on a Monday morning. What breaks a restaurant bot is not a changing menu, it is a menu nobody re-uploaded for two months.
What does it cost to run?
Building and training the chatbot is free, with a 30 message demo to test it and no card. Connecting WhatsApp is on the Starter plan: US$29 a month for 3 chatbots and 2,000 messages, opening with a 7 day trial that does ask for a card. Prices are flat, not per message.
Can it handle the Friday evening rush?
It answers every conversation at once, which is exactly when your phone is ringing out. The Starter plan covers 2,000 messages a month, and a busy restaurant sends about one message per booking enquiry plus a couple of follow-ups.
What happens when I answer a customer myself?
The bot gets out of the way. Your reply, typed on the linked phone, is recorded in the conversation and the assistant stops answering that thread for 30 minutes; every further message from you pushes the pause forward. It starts answering again quietly once the conversation has gone cold, so it can never talk over you mid-sentence.
Build it now, decide later
The Restaurant Host template, your own material and ten minutes. Nothing to install and no card for the free build.