Your AI Connector Docs

Zenchef

Who is this for? This integration is for restaurants that use Zenchef to manage their reservations and guest relationships. If you don’t use Zenchef, you can skip this page.

Use a different reservation system? Anything with an API can still be connected: see Connecting a Tool We Do Not List, which covers custom functions, the API and webhooks.

Zenchef is a restaurant management platform that combines reservations, customer relationships, and marketing tools for hospitality businesses. Connecting Zenchef to Your AI Connector lets your restaurant automate customer messaging around bookings and guest engagement — all through the channels your guests already use, like WhatsApp, SMS, and Instagram.

What Zenchef Does

Zenchef provides restaurants with:

  • Online reservation and table management
  • A digital menu and ordering system
  • Guest database and communication tools
  • Review management and marketing campaigns
  • Website and booking widget

By connecting Zenchef to Your AI Connector, you bring AI-powered messaging into your restaurant operations — handling reservation requests, sending confirmations, and re-engaging past diners automatically.

Connecting Zenchef

Step 1: Enable the connector in Zenchef

Zenchef only lets Your AI Connector see a restaurant after the restaurant has switched the connector on in its own Zenchef account. Do this first, otherwise the Restaurant ID step below stops with a “Zenchef hasn’t given this platform access to that restaurant yet” message.

  1. Log in to your Zenchef account.
  2. Go to Settings > Integrations > Partners.
  3. Under Reservation services, find Your AI Connector (this is the name Your AI Connector is listed under in Zenchef).
  4. Click Connect.

Zenchef’s own guide for this step: Your AI connector. If you can’t find the entry, ask Zenchef support to enable it for your restaurant.

Step 2: Connect the restaurant in Your AI Connector

  1. In the left sidebar, click Settings (gear icon).
  2. In the Settings sidebar, under the Integrations group, click Booking & Calendar.
  3. Find the Zenchef card and click Connect.
  1. Enter your Restaurant ID and click Continue. You’ll find the ID in your Zenchef dashboard URL, or you can ask Zenchef support for it.
  1. Type your restaurant’s name exactly as it appears in Zenchef, then click Add restaurant.

You can add several restaurants this way — click Add restaurant on the connected Zenchef row for each one. There’s no cap on how many restaurants an account (or an agency sub-account) can connect, and restaurants don’t count towards a plan’s channel limit — that limit only counts messaging connections such as WhatsApp numbers.

Restaurant Verification

Your AI Connector verifies that you have admin access to the Zenchef restaurant account before completing a connection, so only authorized team members can link the systems. That’s what the name step is for: we never show you the restaurant’s name, you have to already know it. You get 3 tries every 5 minutes; capitalization and spacing don’t matter, but the words themselves need to match.

Pausing or Removing a Restaurant

Each connected restaurant has its own Pause and Remove buttons on the Booking & Calendar page. Pausing stops the AI taking reservations for that restaurant while leaving it set up; removing deletes it entirely, though you can add it back any time with the same ID.

The Zenchef connection covers reservations; it does not read your Zenchef menu. To let the AI answer menu questions:

  • Add the menu to the knowledge base: put your dishes, prices, allergen notes and daily specials in your AI Agent’s FAQs or knowledge sources, and the bot answers “What vegetarian options do you have?” from there — see Managing FAQs.
  • Send the menu as a file: upload the menu PDF or image to the media library with a “when to send” note, and the bot sends it when a guest asks for the menu or price list.

Tip: update the knowledge base whenever the menu changes, so the bot never quotes an old price.

Booking Management

Once connected, Your AI Connector works with Zenchef reservation data to:

  • Handle availability inquiries: when a customer messages you asking for a table, the AI bot checks Zenchef for availability and responds with open time slots.
  • Take reservations: the bot books the table straight into Zenchef and confirms it in the chat. Zenchef sends its own confirmation to the guest as usual.
  • Send reminders: every table the bot books also appears on your Appointments page, so the Before an appointment automation trigger can remind the guest on WhatsApp, SMS or whichever channel they used — see Reservation reminders below.
  • Process changes: let customers modify or cancel reservations through a messaging conversation, with updates syncing back to Zenchef.

What Your AI Connector does not see: reservations made directly in Zenchef — through your booking widget, by phone, or at the door — never reach Your AI Connector. Only the tables the AI books in a conversation appear on the Appointments page and get reminders.

Tables that need a card guarantee

The AI books with the guest’s name, email, phone, party size, date, time and comment. It cannot take a card in the chat, so a table that needs a card guarantee is not booked in the conversation. Instead the AI sends the guest your restaurant’s own Zenchef booking page and explains that a card is needed to hold the table. The guest finishes the booking there, and Zenchef handles the card imprint or prepayment as usual.

This happens on its own when:

  • the service the guest asks for is set up in Zenchef to ask for a card imprint or a prepayment for that party size, or
  • Zenchef refuses the booking because it needs a payment.

Card guarantee from a party size. If you ask for a card from a certain number of guests but have not set that up in Zenchef, you can tell Your AI Connector directly. On Settings → Booking & Calendar, each Zenchef restaurant has a Card guarantee from (guests) box. Enter a number, for example 8, and click Save: from 8 guests up, the AI sends the booking page instead of booking in the chat. Leave the box empty to turn it off. It is off unless you set it, and each restaurant has its own setting.

When Zenchef cannot be checked. If Zenchef does not answer when the AI checks whether a table needs a card guarantee, the AI does not book it. It tells the guest the booking is not confirmed yet and hands the conversation to your team, so you can book it by hand.

Reservation reminders

Reminders are an automation, so you choose the moments yourself and can give each one different wording:

  1. Go to AI Studio → Automations → New automation and pick the Before an appointment trigger (under Appointments).
  2. Pick your reminder moments — 24 hours before, 3 hours before, or any number of minutes — up to five per automation.
  3. Add a Send message step (or Send WhatsApp template for a reminder that lands more than 24 hours after the guest last wrote to you) and drop in the guest’s first name and the reservation time.
  4. Turn on Respect quiet hours in the automation settings if a reminder could land at night.

The full walkthrough, with the WhatsApp 24-hour window explained, is in Example: appointment reminders. If the guest cancels or moves the table in the chat, the reminders are cancelled or moved with it.

Telling your AI Agent to book with Zenchef

Once Zenchef is connected, point your AI Agent at it:

  1. Click AI Agents in the sidebar and open the Agent.
  2. Go to the AI Abilities step and find the Bookings card.
  3. Turn on Let this agent book appointments.
  4. Click the provider picker and choose Zenchef (the provider choices appear right under the switch).

Automated Customer Engagement

Beyond reservations and menus, the integration supports:

  • Welcome messages: automatically greet new customers who reach out via any messaging channel.
  • Post-visit follow-ups: message guests after their visit to thank them and invite them back.
  • Seasonal campaigns: use Your AI Connector's Broadcasts to promote holiday menus, wine dinners, or special events to the guests in your contacts (guests who messaged you, or a list you import yourself; Zenchef’s guest list is not imported automatically).
  • Review requests: automatically ask satisfied guests to leave a review after their visit.
  • Loyalty outreach: identify repeat guests and send them personalized offers or early access to special events.

Tips for Restaurants

  • Put your full menu in the knowledge base. The more menu detail the bot has, the better it answers guest questions.
  • Add operational FAQs to your AI Agent’s knowledge base: hours, parking, private dining options, allergen policies, and dress code — see Managing FAQs.
  • Use tags to segment your guest list — for example, “wine-lover,” “birthday-celebration,” “large-party” — and send targeted broadcasts to each segment.
  • Enable the booking system on your AI Agent so it can handle the full reservation flow without human intervention.

Next Steps