Friday, 19:40. The pass is backed up, a table of eight has just sat down ten minutes late, and your phone buzzes in your apron pocket. Instagram. Someone wants a table for six tomorrow at eight. You will answer it at midnight, or you will forget, and they will book somewhere else.
The messages come in from four or five places. Instagram DMs, the Facebook page, WhatsApp on the restaurant number, the contact form on the site, and the odd email. Most of them say the same thing. A date, a time, a number of people, sometimes a birthday. Most of the answers are the same too.
So the system reads them. It checks the booking diary, whether that is OpenTable, ResDiary or SevenRooms, and replies with what is actually free. If 8pm is gone it offers 7 or 9. Before it confirms it asks the two things you would ask anyway: how many in the party, and any allergies or dietary needs. The answers go into the booking notes, so the kitchen sees 'one coeliac, one nut allergy' on the sheet on Saturday afternoon rather than hearing it at the table.
Then it books the table and sends a confirmation back on the same channel the request came in on. Instagram gets an Instagram reply. WhatsApp gets a WhatsApp message. Nobody is told to go and fill in a form somewhere else.
The messages it cannot handle get left alone and flagged. A request for a table of 20, a complaint, someone asking if you do a vegan tasting menu. Those land in a short list for you with the original message quoted, and you deal with them in the morning with a coffee.
A pub I spoke to was getting 30 to 40 booking messages a week across the channels, and the owner was answering all of them herself between service and bed. The diary did not change. What changed was who was typing.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts, so the DMs still come from your page and the bookings still sit in your diary.