WhatsApp for restaurants and cafés: how do you answer menu questions and reach your customers?

If your restaurant or café's customers message you on WhatsApp, you know the daily questions: what's on the menu, how much is this dish, when do you open, where are you? This article is for restaurant and café owners with no online store. It covers how ATMET Chat's AI answers from your menu, how keyword replies handle opening hours and location, how to send offers to past customers, how your team works from one inbox, and what ATMET Chat doesn't do. The short version is on the restaurants and cafés card on our business page.

What does a restaurant need from WhatsApp?

A restaurant's WhatsApp messages come in four kinds, each with its own tool:

• Questions with a fixed answer: when are you open, and where are you? The answer is the same for every customer, so a ready reply you write once is enough.
• Questions the menu answers: which dishes do you have, how much is a meal, is there a kids' menu? The AI answers these from the files you upload.
• Chats that need a person: a food order, a table booking request, a comment about a dish. Your team handles these, and ATMET Chat keeps them in one place for the right person.
• Messages you start: a weekend offer or a new dish, sent to past customers who agreed to hear from you.

ATMET Chat has three plans for businesses without a Salla, Zid or Shopify store, such as restaurants, clinics, salons and real estate offices. Each feature below names the plan it starts on.

How do you connect your restaurant's number to ATMET Chat?

There are two ways, on every plan: the official connection (WhatsApp API, from Meta), or the ATMET Chat channels, linked by scanning a QR code. You can also use both.

If your number is already on the WhatsApp Business app, it keeps working on your phone with the same number, so customers keep the number they know.

The main difference is message fees. Since October 1, 2026, Meta charges for customer-service replies beyond the first 1,000 a month per number on the official connection; on the ATMET Chat channels there are no message fees.

The official connection also has the customer-service window: when a customer messages you, a 24-hour window opens, and inside it you reply freely. A message you start outside it, such as an offer, needs a Meta-approved template.

How does the AI answer your customers from the menu?

From the Pro plan, you upload your restaurant's files to the knowledge base: the menu, the price list, and anything else you want the AI to answer from. It takes PDFs, images, videos and text, so a menu that's a photo or a PDF goes in as it is.

The AI then answers customers' questions about dishes and prices from those files, around the clock, in the customer's own dialect. Someone asks late at night about a dish or the price of a meal, and the answer comes from your menu without waiting for the restaurant to open. If your files list your branches and their hours, it answers from those too.

The AI answers only from what you upload, so update the file whenever a price or a dish changes.

When does the AI hand a chat to your team? From the Pro plan, the AI stops when a chat needs a person — a customer's complaint, a refund request, or a question your files don't answer. It hands the chat to your team, and you get an alert with the reason.

Learning from your chats. From the Pro plan, when you connect your number, ATMET Chat reads its recent chats once, writes a draft of the AI's instructions for the fields you left empty, then deletes those chats. It never changes text you wrote, and you start from a draft instead of empty fields.

Customers' photos and voice notes. A customer may send a voice note or a photo instead of typing. Understanding customers' photos and voice notes is a Ultra feature, and it stays off until you switch it on in the AI settings. Don't confuse the two: the files the AI answers from are what you upload; photos and voice notes are what the customer sends.

How do you answer questions about hours and location without the AI?

"When do you open?" has one answer, so a ready reply covers it. That's what keyword auto-replies are for, from the Plus plan.

You write a keyword and a ready reply. When a customer's message contains the keyword, your reply goes out at once, even without the AI. For a restaurant:

• "hours": your opening hours for each day, and any days when they differ.
• "location": your address, district and nearest landmark, with a map link written into the reply.
• "branches": the names and addresses of your branches, if you have more than one.

Keyword replies are text only, with no buttons or lists to tap. Make each reply complete on its own.

Two tips:

• Use the words your customers actually type. If they write "address" rather than "location", add a reply for that word too.
• Update replies when things change. If your hours change in Ramadan or over Eid, edit the reply before the new hours start.

How do you send your restaurant's offers to past customers?

When you have a weekend offer, a new dish or a seasonal menu, you can tell past customers with a WhatsApp campaign. From the Plus plan, you send it from an Excel or CSV file:

1. Prepare a file with the numbers of customers who agreed to hear from you on WhatsApp, with their names if you have them.
2. Upload it to ATMET Chat. The import asks you to confirm these customers' consent.
3. Choose a Meta-approved template. Each message is filled in with that person's details from the file, such as their name.
4. Send the campaign.

Three things to know. Campaigns go out over the official connection only, not the ATMET Chat channels. Meta charges for each campaign message and sets how many people you can reach a day. And ATMET Chat adds no commission on Meta's fees.

What about reminders? In ATMET Chat, a reminder is a campaign you send yourself to a list, when you choose — say, reminding customers of your weekend offer before it starts. No reminder goes out on its own, except through a workflow (Beta) you build yourself on the Ultra plan, with a wait step before the message.

How does your team handle chats from one number?

From the Plus plan, every WhatsApp chat your restaurant receives lands in one inbox, and your staff reply from it on the same number. No one needs to hold the restaurant's phone, and customers always see one number.

In the inbox you can:

• Assign each chat to a person or a whole team — orders to whoever handles orders, complaints to the manager.
• Leave an internal note that only your team sees, such as "Prefers to pick up from the branch".
• Close a chat when it's done; a new message from the customer reopens it.
• Label chats with your own labels on every plan, such as "order", "booking" and "complaint".

With the AI, from the Pro plan, chats carry ATMET Chat's status labels automatically. From the Ultra plan, the AI reads each chat and applies the one of your labels that fits, hands the chat to the right teammate automatically, and you see each teammate's reply speed and the number of chats they handled.

Does ATMET Chat take orders and bookings?

Know the tool's limits before you start. ATMET Chat has no ordering system for restaurants: no cart, no checkout, no payment link and no delivery tracking. A customer's order arrives as a chat in your inbox, and someone on your team handles it the way you do today, confirming the items and the address.

Bookings work the same way: there is no booking system, no calendar and no automatic confirmation. A table booking request arrives as a chat, and a person on your team answers and confirms it. There are no automatic or scheduled booking reminders.

What ATMET Chat adds is order: these chats land in one place, and you assign them, label them and leave notes on them. If your plan includes the AI, it answers the menu questions that come before an order, so your team can focus on the order itself.

Which plan suits your restaurant?

The plans nest: each has everything in the one before it.

• Plus (99 SAR a month): the team inbox, keyword replies, campaigns from Excel or CSV, and both ways to connect.
• Pro (199 SAR a month): adds the AI that answers from your menu, smart escalation, and learning from your chats.
• Ultra (249 SAR a month): adds customers' photos and voice notes once switched on, AI labelling, automatic hand-off and team performance stats, and custom workflows you build yourself (Beta).

If customers mostly ask about hours and location, the first plan may be enough. If they ask a lot about dishes and prices, the AI that answers from your menu starts on the Pro plan.

Before you choose, try ATMET Chat free for 14 days with no card and every Ultra feature open; nothing is charged automatically. To continue, choose a plan on the dashboard's Account page and pay by card (mada, Visa or Mastercard) or Apple Pay. A yearly plan is 12 months for the price of 11. Details are on the plans and pricing page.

Where do you start?

A practical order:

1. Connect your number one way or both.
2. Write keyword replies for "hours" and "location", and "branches" if you have several.
3. Upload your menu and price list to the knowledge base, if your plan includes the AI.
4. Add your team, decide who handles orders, bookings and comments, and create your labels.
5. Prepare a file of customers who agreed to hear from you, and send your first offer on a Meta-approved template over the official connection.

Each use, with the plan it starts on, is summed up on the restaurants and cafés card on our business page.