A WhatsApp bot for a restaurant or cafe: what it can answer, and what stays with your team

What a bot can do for your guests

The jobs that suit a bot are the ones where the answer already exists in writing. You keep the facts; the bot reads them back to whoever asks, at any hour, and writes down what a guest wants from you.

Hours, menu and directions

Put opening hours, holiday changes, the menu with prices, the address and a few lines of directions on one tab of a Google Sheet. When a guest asks “are you open on Sunday?” or “is there parking?”, the agent reads that tab and answers from it. Keep the facts in the sheet rather than in the agent’s memory: Hermes memory is deliberately small (about 2,200 characters for the agent’s own notes), enough for a few rules but not for a menu.

Allergens, from your own list

If you want the bot to answer allergy questions at all, give it your written allergen list, one row per dish, and tell it to quote only from that list. If a dish is not on the list, or the guest describes a severe allergy, it should say it cannot confirm and pass the question to a person. A language model can misread or fill a gap with a plausible guess, so the list is the source and the staff are the check. Tell the agent to end every allergen answer by asking the guest to confirm with the team.

Table requests

The agent asks for a name, a date, a time and how many people, then adds a row to your booking sheet. What it does next is the subject of its own section below. Tell it to reply only to guests who wrote to you first. That is a rule you give it, not a setting that enforces it.

For the wider picture across any small business, see an AI assistant for small business owners, or the use cases hub for other trades.

Which WhatsApp route, and why a separate number

There are two very different things called a WhatsApp bot. One is built on the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta’s supported route for a company, with a registered business number. The other is an agent linked to an ordinary WhatsApp account the way WhatsApp Web is, after you scan a QR code. ReadyHermes, like Hermes Agent’s built-in WhatsApp support, is the second kind. ReadyHermes does not offer the Business Platform. The full comparison is in an AI agent for your WhatsApp; it is not repeated here.

The Hermes documentation, read on 4 November 2026, warns that WhatsApp does not officially support third-party bots outside the Business API and that a bridge like this carries a small risk of account restrictions. It advises a dedicated phone number for the bot rather than a personal one. For a restaurant facing the public, that advice becomes a rule: use a separate number that is only for the bot, never your own phone and never the number printed on your menus if it is the only way guests reach you. If WhatsApp restricted that number, you would lose the bot, not your personal chats.

If your business needs a bot that is supported, stable and answers under your business name, use the Business Platform through a provider that sells it. Hermes can also connect to it by its own route (hermes whatsapp-cloud), but that needs a Meta Business account and a web address that Meta can reach, and it is a project in itself. On that route a free-form reply is only allowed within 24 hours of the guest’s last message; later messages need approved templates, which Hermes Agent 0.22.5 does not send.

If you run Hermes yourself, the linked-device route is hermes whatsapp with WHATSAPP_MODE=bot and the open-to-everyone setting described in the Hermes Agent WhatsApp guide. The install is covered in how to install Hermes Agent.

Table requests: the agent records, you confirm

This bot is not a reservation system. It has no floor plan, no count of tables or seats, and it cannot tell that 13:00 on Sunday is already full. If you connect Google Calendar it can look at the events you have put there, but a calendar of bookings is only as complete as what you or your team enter. Preventing a double booking is your job.

A workable pattern looks like this:

1. Make a Google Sheet with columns for name, date and time, guests, notes and status. The agent adds a row for each request with the status “Requested”. Connected apps can append rows to a sheet and look a row up.
2. Tell the agent what to say: that this is a request, not a confirmed table, and that the team will message to confirm. Do not let it promise a table.
3. Your team checks the sheet, decides, and answers the guest from the phone that holds the bot number (or tells the agent to send “confirmed” or “sorry, we are full” if you would rather keep it in one place). Then they change the status.
4. Optionally, once a booking is confirmed, ask the agent to create a Google Calendar event for it. The connected Calendar app can create events and find free time.

You can also ask the agent, in your own chat with it, to list the requests still marked “Requested”. Hermes has a built-in scheduler, so a recurring job such as a morning list is possible, but test that the message arrives where you expect before relying on it.

The Sheets side is covered in more depth in an AI agent for Google Sheets.

Strangers on the line: keep it connected to almost nothing

A bot that answers the public means anyone can message it, including people who try to talk it into doing something else. The ReadyHermes panel for letting anyone message a WhatsApp agent makes you tick a box saying you understand strangers can reach anything the agent is connected to, and its own text says instructions in chat are guidance, not a lock.

• Connect only what guests need. That means the menu and booking sheet, perhaps a calendar. Do not connect your personal Gmail or anything with supplier or staff details.
• A Sheets connection is not limited to one file. The connected-app actions include searching for spreadsheets and changing them, so the agent can reach every sheet in that account. Use a separate Google account for the restaurant bot that holds only the menu and booking sheets.
• The agent has its own tools too, such as browsing the web and working with files in its own workspace. Guests’ chats also use your assistant’s AI allowance, so a busy or abusive chat costs you.

The cleanest way to do this on ReadyHermes is to run the restaurant bot as a separate assistant. The bot menu offers a “New instance”, described in the panel as a separate agent on its own computer, with its own memory and AI allowance, on its own subscription. An “Add sub-bot” option also exists, but it shares the computer and the plan’s AI allowance with your main assistant. A separate instance keeps the restaurant bot’s connections, memory and allowance apart from your personal assistant, which is what you want for a bot strangers can reach.

Telegram, where your guests use it

In some places guests message cafes on Telegram rather than WhatsApp. Telegram has a supported bot system, so a bot there has a public username and no linked phone number. The catch is access control. Hermes documents two ways to decide who can talk to a Telegram bot, an allowlist of user IDs (TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS) or DM pairing, where an unknown sender gets a short code that you approve. Both are built for known people. A self-hosted Hermes can also open its Telegram bot to every sender with TELEGRAM_ALLOW_ALL_USERS=true, which is a deliberate security decision: anyone can then talk the agent into using what it is connected to.

On ReadyHermes, connecting Telegram means pasting a token from BotFather and approving a pairing code, so the bot answers you. ReadyHermes has no Telegram setting that opens it to the public the way the WhatsApp Anyone option does. If guests need a public Telegram bot today, you would run Hermes yourself and take on that setting. The Hermes Agent Telegram guide covers the connection.

What it cannot do, and the rules to respect

• It does not answer phone calls. Guests who ring still reach a person or voicemail.
• It does not take payments, deposits or card details. Do not ask it to.
• It does not know your live availability, kitchen stock or today’s sold-out dishes unless you write it down where it can read it.
• It can be wrong. It may misread a time or a name, so read the sheet before you confirm.
• It does not replace the allergy conversation with staff, whatever it says.
• It should not message anyone who has not written to you first. Hermes warns against automating outbound messages to people who have not messaged you, and WhatsApp’s Terms of Service, read on 4 November 2026, allow it to suspend or terminate access to its services, including for violating the letter or spirit of the terms.
• WhatsApp groups are not supported on ReadyHermes; its WhatsApp connection answers direct chats only. A linked phone also has to be used on WhatsApp now and then, or WhatsApp unlinks the device after about 14 days.
• Guest messages go to an AI model provider to be answered, so mention that in your privacy notice if you need one.

Whether this setup complies with WhatsApp’s terms for your business is not something we can tell you; we are not lawyers. If that matters, the Business Platform is the route Meta supports.

A restaurant WhatsApp bot on ReadyHermes

ReadyHermes runs your own Hermes Agent for you, so there is no bridge to install or keep alive. A new assistant is ready in about 10 seconds and the free trial lasts one hour: use it to connect a spare number and send a few test questions. Settings changes that restart the assistant, such as connecting WhatsApp or changing who can message it, take about a minute.

Go to Channels, choose WhatsApp and press Connect, then scan the QR code from Linked devices on the phone with the bot number. The panel lets you choose who can message the assistant: Only me (the default), Specific numbers, or Anyone. For a restaurant you want Anyone: tick the acknowledgement box and press Save. Add Google Sheets, and Calendar if you want it, from the Apps panel, signing in with the restaurant’s own Google account. See the apps page for what can be connected.

ReadyHermes does not offer the official WhatsApp Business Platform, a booking widget, phone answering or payments. It is a linked-device assistant that answers messages and keeps a sheet.