A restaurant sends the same kinds of messages every day: booking confirmations, reminders, rota changes, reorders. Each one is small. Together they take a real share of the week, and they are exactly the kind of work automation handles well.
These are the five workflows we would look at first, with the detail that decides whether each one actually helps.
1. Reservation confirmations and reminders
Every booking, whether it comes from your website, a booking platform or the phone, triggers a confirmation and a reminder the day before, with a simple way to confirm or cancel. The detail that matters: cancellations must flow back into your booking system automatically, or the reminder creates work instead of saving it.
■ An automation run, step by step
2. Post-visit review requests
A short, personal message a few hours after the visit, linking straight to your review page. Timing and tone matter more than volume. It should read like it came from the owner, and it should never go to a guest who has already complained.
3. After-hours call handling
Calls outside opening hours are answered by an AI voice agent that can take a booking, answer questions about hours and menus, and send a confirmation text. The detail: it must connect to your real availability, and it must hand anything unusual, such as a large event or a complaint, to a person the next morning.
4. Staff schedule notifications
When the rota changes, the affected staff get a message with their new shift, and swap requests alert the manager. The detail: send only the change, not the whole rota, or people stop reading.
5. Low-stock supplier orders
When key stock falls below a threshold in your POS or inventory sheet, a reorder is drafted to the right supplier. The detail: keep a one-tap approval step for anything expensive or variable, so the automation proposes and a person decides.
■ Low-stock reorders
□ By hand
- ·Someone counts stock at close
- ·Reorders depend on memory
- ·Supplier emails written from scratch
■ Automated
- →Stock levels checked on a schedule
- →Items under their reorder point listed
- →A supplier order drafted for approval
Where to start
Pick the workflow that causes the most interruptions this week, not the most impressive one. A single reliable automation that the team trusts will do more for adoption than five half-finished ones.
We build these on tools you may already use, including Make.com, n8n and Zapier, connected to your booking, POS and messaging systems. See our automation work or talk to us about your restaurant.
■ What we build
Systems designed to keep moving after your team logs off.