Connect Restoo (restaurant bookings)

If your restaurant runs on Restoo, your assistant can book tables straight into your account: it checks real availability, books the table in the chat and handles your customers' changes and cancellations, always within your Restoo settings. Restoo stays your booking system, and the one that notifies your customers; the assistant is what answers for it in the chat, 24/7. This guide shows you how to connect it and what to check in your Restoo so everything works the way you expect.

Before you start

• You need the Pro or E-commerce plan. If you're on Free or Basic, you can switch from Billing in your dashboard.
• Your Restoo account id (Account ID): the short name of your Restoo, for example "my-restaurant".
• The API key Restoo issues for your restaurant for the ChatME integration. If you don't know where it is, ask Restoo or write to info@chatme.es and we'll help.
• One assistant connects to one Restoo restaurant.

Step 1 · Connect it in your ChatME dashboard

1. In your dashboard, go to Integrations → Restoo (on plans below Pro, the page shows as locked).
2. Paste your account id and the API key, and click Connect.
3. ChatME checks the key directly against your Restoo before saving it. If Restoo rejects it, the page tells you and nothing is saved.

The key is stored encrypted and never shown again. Once connected, you'll see your restaurant's name, its city and time zone, the maximum party size per booking (when Restoo reports one) and, when it applies, the notice "changes from chat disabled in Restoo".

Step 2 · Check your Restoo settings

The assistant has no booking rules of its own: it follows your Restoo's. Before you open it to customers, review these in Restoo:

• Shifts, capacity and areas (indoors, terrace…). The assistant offers areas by name when your Restoo has them.
• Maximum party size and how far ahead people can book. Beyond them, the assistant doesn't book: it explains the reason your Restoo gives and offers what it allows.
• Children. If your Restoo counts them separately, the assistant passes them separately when the customer mentions them.
• Requests and the wait list. If your Restoo offers them when there's no table, the assistant offers them too.
• Cancellation policies (card guarantee or prepayment). The assistant presents them before booking.
• Booking changes from external integrations. For customers to change their booking from the chat (move it or change the party size), this has to be switched on in your Restoo; if it isn't, your ChatME dashboard tells you. Cancelling from the chat works either way.
• Phone numbers in international format with no spaces (for example, +34600123456). That's what lets the assistant find a booking made outside the chat.

If you put your Restoo on stand-by, the assistant stops offering tables. Once you reactivate it, it offers them again as soon as ChatME re-reads your settings: open the Restoo page in your dashboard (it re-reads them if it hasn't for more than 12 hours) or reconnect.

Step 3 · A note for the assistant (optional)

On the same page you can write a line for the assistant, for example: "tasting menu Fridays and Saturdays only; terrace not bookable". Keep it short: the assistant reads the first 200 characters. It keeps taking your menu, allergens and opening hours from your knowledge base, as always.

How a booking works

1. Availability. The customer asks for a day, a time and a party size. The assistant checks your Restoo and only offers times that are really free.
2. If there's no table, it opens with the reason your Restoo gives and offers only what your Restoo allows: another time, another day, a booking request (you accept or decline it in Restoo), a place on the wait list (a queue, not a table) or your contact details (and, if your Restoo suggests it, another restaurant in your group). A request or a wait-list place is only made if the customer chooses it, and is never presented as a confirmed table.
3. Details. When asking for them, in the same message, the assistant tells the customer their details go to the restaurant's booking system. It asks for a name, an email and a phone number; on WhatsApp, the booking goes under the number they write from and the email is optional.
4. Conditions. If the shift asks for a card guarantee or prepayment, or the table is time-limited, the assistant presents those conditions and only goes ahead if the customer accepts them. The guarantee or prepayment is completed on Restoo's secure page, through the link the assistant sends; until then the booking is held, not final, and cancels itself if it isn't completed in time. It never asks for card details in the chat.
5. Booked. It lands in your Restoo like any other booking. The assistant confirms it and, if the customer left an email, tells them they'll get the restaurant's confirmation. Restoo sends that confirmation, by email and/or SMS, depending on your settings.
6. Requests. A high chair, a stroller, an allergy or a gift voucher is passed on to the restaurant with the booking, never as a guarantee. If your Restoo limits high chairs or strollers per time slot, the assistant checks it. A wish that comes up after the booking was made can't be added from the chat: the assistant gives your phone number.
7. Large groups. If a group is bigger than your Restoo accepts, the assistant doesn't book: it gives your contact details or, if the chat is offering a form at that moment (for example a group form triggered by its keywords), takes the request with it so you can handle it.

About the customer's phone number. On the website, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram, if that number is already on a customer record in your Restoo with a different email (or no email, or on more than one record), or it can't be checked at that moment, the booking arrives without the phone so that record isn't overwritten. It also arrives without the phone if that number already has a booking in the same service that day, if that day's bookings can't be read, or if it's an early-hours booking asked for after midnight.

Checking, changing and cancelling from the chat

• On WhatsApp, the assistant finds the customer's bookings by the number they write from; for a booking made outside the chat that is more than 30 days away, it asks for the date.
• On other channels, the customer has to give the email and phone number they booked with, and the booking's day and time: all four must match. If something doesn't match, the assistant says it can't find the booking, without saying what failed, and after a few attempts it stops looking.
• A booking made outside the chat (by phone, on your website or another channel) is only found if your Restoo stores the phone number in international format with no spaces and, outside WhatsApp, if the booking has an email. Otherwise, you handle it.
• Changing (moving the booking or changing the party size) is only possible if you have booking changes from external integrations switched on in Restoo, and always against the real availability of the new day and time.
• Cancelling: if your policy carries a fee, the assistant states it first and only cancels if the customer accepts it.

Restoo notifies the customer of the change or cancellation, just as it does for the booking.

What the assistant never does

• It never takes payment or asks for cards: guarantees and prepayments are always completed on Restoo's page.
• It never emails or texts your customers: Restoo sends every notice. ChatME sends none.
• It never treats a table as booked unless Restoo confirmed it.
• It never books experiences or special menus, or applies promo codes: if someone asks for one, it says it can't be handled in the chat and gives your contact details. Gift vouchers are accepted when booking.
• It never speaks for the restaurant: it doesn't promise what your team will do; it only says what your Restoo returns.

Activity log

On the Restoo page of your dashboard you see what the assistant has done (booking created, request sent, wait list, booking updated, booking cancelled) and the booking updates Restoo sends us (for every booking at your restaurant, including those that don't go through the chat, without customer details). It shows the 30 most recent. It's a backup record: Restoo is the source of truth, and anything you want to edit, you edit there.

Upkeep and limits

• ChatME re-reads your restaurant's settings when you open the Restoo page in your dashboard, if it hasn't read them for more than 12 hours. Availability and bookings are always checked live.
• If Restoo stops accepting the stored key, the assistant stops booking and, from the first conversation that detects it, the page warns you; connect a new key.
• Disconnect stops bookings from the chat; your activity log is kept.
• To prevent abuse there are caps: 2 bookings per conversation and 2 per email, within 24 hours (bookings cancelled in that same conversation don't count; requests and wait-list places do), 30 bookings per hour across the assistant and 15 changes or cancellations per hour.

Try it

Careful: a test booking is a real booking in your Restoo, and Restoo will send its confirmation to the email or phone you give. Test with your own details:

1. From your widget, ask for a table on a day and time you have free, and check that, when it asks for your details, the assistant tells you they go to the restaurant's booking system.
2. Book, and check that it shows up in your Restoo and in your dashboard's activity log.
3. From the same chat, cancel it with your email, phone, the day and the time.

If you're going to run several tests in a row, remember the cap of 2 bookings per email in 24 hours. If something doesn't add up, write to info@chatme.es.