8 Restaurant Chatbots in 2024: 5 Use Cases & Best Practices

Restaurant chatbots can be a smart investment for restaurant chains since they provide: 

• 7/24 customer engagement
• Workforce augmentation
• Scalable marketing capabilities
• Providing standardized services
• Collecting customer feedback

Despite their benefits, many chain restaurant owners and managers are unaware of restaurant chatbots. This article aims to close the information gap by providing use cases, case studies and best practices regarding chatbots for restaurants.

8 restaurant chatbots

Table features:

This table is organized by the company’s number of employees except for sponsors which can be identified with the links in their names. Platforms with 2+ employees that provide chatbot services for restaurants or allow them to produce chatbots are included in the list.

Sponsored:

Salesforce is the CRM market leader and Salesforce Contact Genie enables multi-channel live chat supported by AI-driven assistants. Salesforce Contact Center enables workflow automation for customer service operations by leveraging chatbot and conversational AI technologies.

What is a restaurant chatbot?

A restaurant chatbot, also referred to as a restaurant bot, is a conversational AI tool that engages with customers on:

• Mobile apps
• Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger
• Social media apps like Instagram
• Website’s chat window and more.

Restaurant chatbots are designed to automate specific responsibilities carried out by human staff, like booking reservations. Chatbots might have a variety of skills depending on the use case they are deployed for. 

For example, some chatbots have fully advanced NLP, NLU and machine learning capabilities that enable them to comprehend user intent. As a result, they are able to make particular gastronomic recommendations based on their conversations with clients.

On the other hand, rule-based chatbots with comparatively limited artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities can automate a variety of tasks such as responding to clients’ frequently asked questions (FAQs) or sending out mass notifications about events.

Top 5 restaurant chatbots use cases

Despite the fact that chatbots have a variety of general applications, such as automating customer service, this section only focuses on 5 use cases specific to the restaurant industry (see Figure 1).

1. Take orders

Restaurant bots can take orders from customers, understand their particular needs, and deliver the orders to the kitchen for preparation. Restaurant chatbots can take orders for dine-in, takeaway, and motorcycle courier home delivery (see Figure 2).

• Takeaway services: Customers interact with chatbots on WhatsApp, restaurant websites and social media channels. They provide information regarding the meals they want to eat. Then, chatbots convey the messages to the chefs and determine the pickup time based on how busy the kitchen is.
• Dine-in: Many restaurants switched from paper menus to QR codes after the pandemic. Users can view the restaurant’s menu by scanning the code. On these sites, several restaurants have installed chatbots referred to as waiter bots. To order food or drinks, customers can now interact with waiter bots. As a result, customers no longer need to wait for waiters and bartenders to take their orders.

2. Handle table reservations & cancellations

One of the common applications of restaurant bots is making reservations. They can engage with customers around the clock to provide and collect following information. 

• Opening and closing times of the restaurant
• Number of guests
• Reservation time
• Snacks and cocktail preferences for the reservation time
• Location of table
• Purpose of the event (birthday, anniversary etc.)
• Duration of dinner and so on.

This knowledge enables restaurants to plan a top-notch service for guests. For instance, if there will be a birthday celebration, the restaurant can prepare a cake and set the tables appropriately to enhance the customer experience. Chatbots also aid restaurants in controlling client traffic as well.

3. Introduce the menu and prices

Customers can learn about menu items and food and drink costs via chatbots. Customers can then decide whether the dishes and prices are appropriate for them (see Figure 3).

The introduction of menus may be a useful application for restaurant regulars. Since they might enjoy seeing menu modifications like the addition of new foods or cocktails.

Figure 3: A chatbot introduces the menu of the restaurant.

4. Recommend dishes and drinks

Restaurant chatbots can recommend customers dishes and drinks to improve customer engagement. There are two main of doing this:

1. Rule based recommendations: There is no use of advanced NLP for this kind of recommendation. Instead of NLP-driven intent recognition, chefs identify the foods and beverages that match. Chatbots provide general food and drink recommendations according to this labeling. For instance, a chatbot can suggest red wine as an appropriate beverage if clients prefer a NY steak as their main meal.
2. Recommendation via natural language: Advanced NLP skills are needed for this more complex food and beverage recommendations. In this example, a client and a chatbot for a restaurant discuss the customer’s preferences and prior experiences. According to this data, the chatbot proposes certain foods and beverages the client would like. We anticipate that more restaurants will utilize such an application of chatbots in the near future due to advancements in NLP.

5. Send notifications

Chatbots can send notifications to the customers regarding:

• Delivery time of meal
• Reservation and cancellation details
• Discounts
• New meals, beverages and cocktails
• Events and more.

Thus, restaurants can scale up their marketing strategies while keeping customers informed regarding their orders and reservations.

Top 4 restaurant chatbot best practices

We recommend restaurants to pay attention to following restaurant chatbots specific best practices while deploying a chatbot (see Figure 4).

1. Consider deploying it on messaging apps and mobile applications together

Although restaurant executives typically think of restaurant websites as the first place to deploy chatbots, offering users an omnichannel experience can boost customer engagement. In this regard, restaurants can deploy chatbots on their custom mobile apps as well as messaging platforms. 

Especially having a messenger bot or WhatsApp bot can be beneficial for restaurants since people are using these platforms for conversation nowadays. For instance, WhatsApp has 2 billion active users as of today. Thus, restaurants can scale their marketing campaigns.

2. Design voice bots

The voice command feature of chatbots used in restaurants ties the growth of voice search in the tourism and hospitality sectors. Businesses that optimize their content for mobile and websites with voice search in mind can gain more visibility while providing users with a better overall experience.

3. Let chatbots send images of your foods and restaurants

Texting with chatbots can be informative for customers. However, seeing the images of the foods and drinks, atmosphere of the restaurant, and the table customers’ will sit can make customers more comfortable regarding their decisions. Therefore, we recommend restaurants to enrich their content with images.

4. Put an end the chat button

Once the query of the customer is resolved it makes sense to end the conversation. When users push the end of the chat button they can direct a very short survey regarding their experience with chatbot. Thus, restaurants can find the main pain points of the chatbot and improve it accordingly. 

To learn more regarding chatbot best practices you can read our Top 14 Chatbot Best Practices That Increase Your ROI article.

You can also read our Hospitality Chatbots: Everything You Need to Know to find out more regarding hospitality industry chatbots.

Finally if you have questions about restaurant chatbots you can reach us:

External Links:

External Links

• 1. “Restaurant Chatbot”. BotStar.
• 2. “Restaurant Chatbot: Conversational Menu for In-House Orders & Deliveries“. Barbora Jassova. June 2020.