Restaurant Chatbot: How to Set One Up for Your Menu and Hours
During service nobody has a free hand to answer the phone or the website chat. Yet guests keep asking the same things: what is on the menu, when you are open today, where to park, whether a private room is available. A restaurant chatbot can answer these questions from your own pages while you cook, and when it cannot, it can give the guest a contact form so you can follow up. Here is a practical setup in five steps, including what the chat does not do.
Step 1: Put menu and visit information on your pages
The chat can only answer from what it can read, so start with your pages. Make sure your site says, in plain text, what you serve, when you are open, where you are, how to get there, where to park and how groups or events are handled. If your menu is a PDF, you can add it as a file in the next step. Pages behind a login are not read. Do not worry about perfect copy; clear sentences are enough.
Step 2: Add your site and your PDF menu
Create your chat and enter your restaurant's website address. Choose the pages it should learn from: menu, opening hours, location, events and contact. You can add PDF, Word or Markdown files, or paste text for anything that is not on the site. Then ask it the questions guests ask in the test chat. Each answer shows the page it came from, and when your pages have no answer the chat says so and offers the next step you chose, instead of guessing. When your menu changes, your sources are read again on the schedule your plan sets, or on demand with Sync now.
Step 3: Write exact answers for hours and specials
Some answers must be worded the same way every time: opening hours, holiday hours, a one-day special. For these, write a saved answer. On the Knowledge page, add the question the way a guest would ask it, add up to five other ways people phrase it, and write the answer. Then choose "Reply with this answer exactly", so the chat sends your words as written. A saved answer is live as soon as you save it, with no waiting for a sync, so a change to tonight's special is on your site in a moment.
Step 4: Set business hours and the contact form
Business hours decide when a guest can ask for a person. Set your time zone and add up to three time ranges for each day, or pause handoff for a day off. With handoff turned on, which needs a paid plan, a guest can ask for a person during those hours and your team gets the chat with a short summary. Outside them, or when nobody is online, the guest gets a contact form to leave their details and question, so you can follow up when you are back. The chat does not take reservations or orders itself, and the agent is told never to ask for card numbers. Add the chat to your site with one script tag and check that OneType shows "Live on" followed by your site's address.
Step 5: Read what guests ask that your pages miss
After a week, look at the questions the chat could not answer. They are grouped by meaning with a count, most asked first, so you see that twelve guests asked about parking or about Sunday hours, not twelve separate chats. Add the missing information to a page, or write a saved answer, and it is live from the next conversation. If a question is off-topic, dismiss it. A few minutes a week keeps the chat in step with what guests really want to know.
Answer guests, even during service
See the restaurant setup: a chatbot for restaurants, learn about saved answers, or start free.