Table booking by chat: what a restaurant should and shouldn't automate
Chat is where many guests now ask for a table. Here is what to hand to an assistant, what to keep for your team, and how to avoid double bookings.
Read article →AI Assistant for Cafés Your counter stays busy, your messages stay answered.
Someone messages your website asking if you have a table for eight on Saturday morning and whether you are open at 7am. Your AI assistant answers at once from your real menu and hours, finds a table and takes the booking. Anything it cannot answer reaches your staff in one tap.
Answers only from your menu, hours and documents — never invents a price.
The rush leaves no hands free for the phone
What's actually happening at your counter
Messages arrive at the busiest moment
A group asks about Saturday while you have a queue at the counter. By the time you reply, they have chosen another café.
Group bookings are won by whoever answers first
A table for eight is a good morning of sales. The café that replies in a minute usually gets it.
The same questions, all day
Opening hours, is there wifi, do you do oat milk, can we bring a cake — answers that never change but still cost you a minute each.
Ask it a question — no signup.
Try it yourselfReservations that hold, menu answers you can stand behind
What you get
01
Bookings without a phone call
Party size, date and time are checked against your real floor plan, service hours and last-seating cutoff — right in the chat.
How: live slot availability from your configured lunch/dinner service periods, not a generic calendar.
02
No double-booking, structurally
Two guests can't be assigned the same table for the same time — it isn't a policy staff have to remember, it's enforced by the system.
How: best-fit table assignment guarded by a database-level no-overlap constraint.
03
Menu questions, answered from your menu
Vegetarian, spice level, portion size, allergens, live price and currency — pulled from what you actually serve, never guessed.
How: your catalog's vertical fields (vegetarian, spicy, portion, allergens) are searchable by the agent directly.
Live on your site in four steps
How it works
1
Pick the Restaurant preset
Seeds a host-stand persona, starter FAQs, and switches on table-booking mode for you.
2
Set your tables & service hours
Table types, zones, capacity, and lunch/dinner service periods with slot length and last-seating cutoff.
3
Upload your menu
Dishes with price, tags and allergen info — or upload the PDF you already hand to guests.
4
Paste one line into your site
A single <script> tag from the dashboard. No app to install, nothing for guests to download.
Ask it a question — no signup.
Try it yourselfWhat you and your guests actually see
See it
Representative mockups of the real dashboard and widget — not stock photos.
Availability, day view
171819202122
T1
T2
T3 (patio)
One lane per table across the evening — click any cell to prefill a new booking.
Menu item
$5
$6
The agent searches these exact fields — vegetarian, spice level, allergens, price.
Staff inbox
OPClaim
DKClaim
Handoffs land here in real time — claim, reply, and resolve without leaving the dashboard.
Reservation drawer
2 tables free
Staff bookings use the same live availability check the chat agent uses.
Reservations
Hold
Confirmed
Confirmed
Chat bookings arrive as holds — confirm with one click, or let unconfirmed ones expire on their own.
Analytics · last 7 days
72%Chats resolved by the AI
46%Chats outside opening hours
3 minMedian staff first reply
94%Positive guest ratings
31Table bookings from chat
7Questions to add to knowledge
See what the AI resolves, when guests write and what it could not answer — so you know what to add next.
Telegram · Floor team group
Handoff
Booking
Lead
Handoffs, leads and bookings ping your team group instantly — connect Telegram or Slack from the dashboard.
Built for how a restaurant actually runs
Everything inside
Table types & zones
Indoor, terrace, private room — each with its own capacity range, all bookable from chat.
Real service periods
Lunch and dinner windows with slot length, table turn time and a last-seating cutoff — not a generic time picker.
Honest "no" reasons
"Fully booked" and "we're closed" are told apart — no confusing dead-end answers.
Opening hours, answered live
Including holiday exceptions and past-midnight closing — the agent always knows if you're open right now.
Bilingual menu
Dish names, descriptions, variants and inventory — searchable in Vietnamese and English.
FAQs in your own words
Answered verbatim, instantly — no LLM paraphrasing your policy.
Lead capture
Name, phone or email and intent — captured mid-conversation, ready for you to follow up.
Instant human handoff
By keyword, by the guest asking, or by your staff claiming a chat — the bot goes silent the moment a human takes over.
Guest directory
Names, phone numbers and visit counts build up automatically as bookings come in.
Any language your guests speak
The AI replies in whichever language a guest writes — far more than Vietnamese and English. Your own dashboard is available in those two today, with more on the way.
Team notifications
A signed webhook fires on every handoff, lead and booking — route it to your existing workflow (e.g. via n8n).
One embed line
A single script tag with your key — works on any website, positioned left or right.
Hold, then confirm
Chat bookings arrive as holds with a reference code. Your staff confirm them in one click, and holds nobody confirms expire on their own so a table is never blocked by a ghost booking.
Reservation manager
Search, confirm and cancel any booking from the dashboard — and guests can cancel their own from the chat with the reference code.
Team alerts on Telegram and Slack
A message lands in your staff group the moment a chat needs a human, a lead comes in or a table is booked — with a test button to check the connection.
Analytics that show what works
See how many chats the AI resolves on its own, how many arrive after hours, how fast staff reply, guest ratings, and the questions it could not answer.
Suggested quick replies
The widget offers up to three tap-to-ask chips, built from what your real guests ask most.
Test before you go live
A built-in playground runs the same engine as the widget, so you can try real guest questions before a single guest does.
Team roles
Owners and admins run everything; floor staff get a handoff-only view of the inbox, leads and conversations.
Matches your brand
Pick the greeting, colors, light or dark theme and left or right position, so the widget feels like part of your site.
Ask it a question — no signup.
Try it yourselfThe questions every owner asks first
Before you ask
It won't make things up
Prices, dishes and hours come only from your menu, FAQs and documents — a hard rule blocks the agent from guessing.
Your guest data stays yours
Conversations, leads and bookings live in your own workspace and are visible only to your team, with roles that limit who sees what.
It never pretends to be a human
And it never names its own internal tools or source documents to a guest — those are hard rules, not a style choice.
Protected against abuse
Domain allow-listing, short-lived visitor tokens, per-visitor rate limits, and a daily spend cap that degrades gracefully to FAQ answers instead of overspending.
Simple pricing: one setup fee, one monthly plan
Pricing
International customers: 12-month minimum contract, paid once a year upfront by SWIFT or Wise.
Monthly prices are shown for comparison only — international plans are billed yearly. Switch to Yearly to choose a plan.
Starter
One café, getting started
$79/month
+ $249 one-time setup
- 1 location · 1 AI agent
- 300 conversations / month≈ 10 guests asking a day
- Answers from your menu, FAQs and documents
- Table booking holds — staff confirm on the dashboard
- Lead capture and human handoff inbox
- Email and Telegram alerts for new leads and booking requests
- Email support
Setup includes
- We load your menu, FAQs and opening hours
- Café preset and booking rules configured
- Widget greeting and colors matched to your brand, plus install help
- One 30-minute handover call
Most popularSee payment terms →
Growth
For busy cafés and small chains
$199/month
+ $499 one-time setup
- Everything in Starter
- Up to 3 locations · 2 AI agents
- 1,000 conversations / month≈ 33 guests asking a day
- Agent creates the booking itself, no staff step needed
- Choose your agent’s tone (friendly, formal, concise, enthusiastic)
- Adds Slack alerts for handoffs, leads and bookings
- Analytics dashboard and suggested quick replies
- A prompt bubble beside the chat icon that invites visitors to ask
- Team accounts with roles
- Priority support
Setup includes
- Everything in Starter setup, for up to 3 locations
- Slack alerts connected (Telegram is set up on every plan)
- Staff accounts and roles set up
- Knowledge import from your PDFs, docs and web pages
Premium
For groups that want it done for them
$449/month
+ $999 one-time setup
- Everything in Growth
- Up to 2 brands · 5 locations · 3 AI agents
- 3,000 conversations / month≈ 100 guests asking a day
- Zalo group alerts for handoffs, leads and bookings
- Signed webhook to your own workflow (e.g. n8n)
- A custom persona and name for your agent, per brand
- Your own catalog attributes — add, rename or remove the fields the agent filters on
- Guided onboarding — we load your data
- Monthly knowledge refresh
- Named support contact
Setup includes
- Everything in Growth setup, for up to 5 locations across up to 2 brands
- Webhook / n8n integration built with you
- Zalo group alerts connected
- A separate persona for each brand
- Test-conversation review before going live, plus staff training
Enterprise
For groups with more than 2 brands or 5 locations
Contact us
- Custom brand, location and AI agent limits
- Custom integrations
- Custom SLA
What if I go over?
Your agent never stops answering guests because of a limit — a night with nobody answering is real lost revenue.
- 80%We warn you by email and on Telegram (if connected).
- 100%We add one 500-conversation pack ($79) automatically, billed on your next invoice, and tell you right away.
- After 2 packs in a monthWe stop adding packs and suggest moving up a plan. Your agent keeps running to the end of the period.
- Conversations don’t roll over to the next month.
- One conversation = one guest within 24 hours — a guest who asks again the same day isn’t counted again.
- Up to 50 test conversations a month from you or your staff are free.
Prices in USD, excluding taxes. One conversation = one guest within 24 hours — a guest who asks again the same day isn’t counted again. Need more? Add 500 conversations for $79. Chat runs on your website widget. See payment terms
Ask it a question — no signup.
Try it yourselfHow many bookings a month does it take to pay for the AI plan?
Run it with your own numbers — we do not estimate them for you
Fill in the three numbers above to see the result.
Assumes those bookings would otherwise go through an OTA (hotels) or be lost (restaurants). It is arithmetic on your numbers, not a promise. The AI books guests who reach your own website; it does not replace your OTA listings or bring you traffic.
Ask the host a question
Try it yourself
This is a sample restaurant with sample data. Tap a question — or type your own — and see how the agent handles a table request mid-rush.
- Menu, prices and hours come from the venue’s own data — never guessed.
- Tables are checked against the floor plan, so the same table is never booked twice.
Starting the assistant…
The data the agent reads
The sample host’s data, laid out exactly like the Support Platform’s import templates. Fill the same files with your own tables, menu and hours — we load them for you, or you import them yourself.
Business profile — set on the Business page
| Field | What the agent knows |
|---|---|
| Name | Lotus Kitchen |
| Introduction | Lotus Kitchen is a Vietnamese restaurant with a big vegetarian section and two branches, in District 1 and District 3, Ho Chi Minh City. |
| Amenities | Vegetarian menu, private room for groups |
| Languages | Vietnamese, English |
| Phone | +84 977 5656 70 |
| hello+restaurant.demo@ouraitech.com | |
| Website | https://ouraitech.com/products/sales-agent-restaurant#try |
Locations — set on the Business page
| Code | Name | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Lotus Kitchen Q1 | 27 Lê Thánh Tôn, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City |
| Q3 | Lotus Kitchen Q3 | 56 Võ Văn Tần, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City |
Opening hours — set on the Business page
| Days | Opens | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| Every day | 10:30 | 22:00 |
Menu (extract) — the “catalog” sheet
| Name | Category | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tofu & mushroom claypot | Mains > Vegetarian | $6 | portion |
| Lotus root salad | Starters | $5 | portion |
| Lemongrass grilled pork | Mains | $8 | portion |
| Peach lemongrass tea | Drinks | $2 | glass |
Hours and policies as FAQs — the “faqs” sheet
| Question | What the agent tells guests |
|---|---|
| Tell me about Lotus Kitchen | Lotus Kitchen is a Vietnamese restaurant with a big vegetarian section and two branches, in District 1 and District 3, Ho Chi Minh City. |
| Where are your branches? | Two branches: Lotus Kitchen Q1 (27 Lê Thánh Tôn, District 1) and Lotus Kitchen Q3 (56 Võ Văn Tần, District 3). Which one would you like to book? |
| What are your opening hours? | Daily 10:30am–10:00pm. |
| When is the last order? | The kitchen takes its last order at 9:30pm. |
| How long is a booked table held? | A booked table is held for 15 minutes after the booked time. |
| Do you have vegetarian dishes? | Yes — 9 vegetarian dishes on the full menu. |
| Do you have a private room for groups? | Yes — the private room seats up to 24; staff confirm a set menu with the guest. |
Policies — a PDF you upload to the knowledge base
Download the PDF| Section | What the agent can quote |
|---|---|
| Opening hours | The restaurant is open daily from 10:30am to 10:00pm. The kitchen takes its last order at 9:30pm. |
| Booking and holding a table | We recommend booking for weekends and evenings. Tell us the date, time, party size and which branch you would like. A booked table is held for 15 minutes after the booked time. If you will be later than that, please let us know so staff can arrange it. |
| Vegetarian dishes and allergies | The full menu has 9 vegetarian dishes. Guests with a food allergy should tell staff when booking or ordering so the kitchen can take note. |
| Large groups and the private room | The private room at Lotus Kitchen Q3 seats up to 24 guests, suited to birthdays, family gatherings and company groups. For large groups, staff confirm a set menu with the guest; tell us the planned date and the number of people. |
| Changes and cancellations | Please let us know as early as possible if you need to change the time or cancel a table, so we can keep it for other guests. |
Tables — the “resources” sheet
| Code | Name | Category | Sleeps / seats | Area | Branch code |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Table 5 | 2 | Window | Q1 | |
| 6 | Table 6 | 4 | Garden | Q1 | |
| 9 | Table 9 | 6 | Main hall | Q3 | |
| PR | Private room | 24 | Upstairs | Q3 |
Left out on purpose: the corkage fee. Ask about it and the agent hands the guest to your staff instead of guessing.
Download the templates
The same files the platform imports — rooms or tables, extras or menu, and FAQs — plus a sample policies PDF to upload to the knowledge base. Replace the examples with yours.
Want this with your own tables and menu?
We set it up with your floor plan, menu and hours, then show you in a 15-minute demo.
Book a free 15-minute demoStraight answers
FAQ
Does a café really need bookings?
Not for every walk-in. It is useful for the occasions that matter: groups, birthdays and small meetings, where a guest wants to know there will be a table.
Can it answer questions about my menu?
Yes — from the menu, prices and FAQs you give it, such as drinks, dietary options and opening hours. If something is not in your information it says so and offers to bring in a person, rather than guessing.
What counts as a conversation, and what if I go over?
A conversation is one guest within 24 hours on your website widget — however many messages they send, even if they come back later the same day. Conversations don’t roll over to the next month. At 80% of your allowance we warn you; at 100% we add a 500-conversation pack automatically, billed on your next invoice; after two packs in a month we suggest moving up a plan instead. Your agent never stops answering guests because of a limit.
Do I need to host or install anything?
No. We run the platform for you — you paste one script tag into your website and manage everything from the dashboard.
Does it work on my existing website?
Yes — one script tag, no matter what your site is built with. It appears as a chat launcher in the corner of the page.
Can guests still cancel or change a booking?
Yes — a guest can cancel their own reservation from the same conversation using the reference code, or your staff can do it from the dashboard.
What happens when we're fully booked?
The agent tells the guest plainly that the requested time is fully booked rather than guessing at a table — and can offer a human handoff for a waitlist request.
Is it limited to Vietnamese and English?
No — the AI itself can reply in whichever language a guest writes in. What's limited to Vietnamese and English today is the admin dashboard your staff use; more admin languages are on the roadmap.
Can I edit what it says?
Yes — persona, greeting, menu and FAQs are all yours to edit any time from the dashboard.
Does it answer on Facebook or Zalo?
The live channel today is your website widget. You can still route handoffs, leads and bookings to your team on other channels via a webhook (for example, through n8n).
Ready when you are
Stop losing the group that messages during the rush
Set it up once with your tables, menu and service hours — it answers and books from that moment on.
Also built for: Restaurants & cafés