The challenge
A multi-outlet restaurant group running 9 outlets across Mumbai and Bangalore had three reservation channels — Zomato Book, direct phone, walk-in — and none of them talked. Hosts kept paper waitlists. Birthday and anniversary tags lived in the GM's head. Friday nights had 35-minute waits with no SMS, so guests walked out. The marketing manager pulled covers data from the Hostbook POS once a month, by which point any campaign was reactive.
How we deployed
- Built a WhatsApp table-booking concierge that read Hostbook live availability across all 9 outlets.
- Put the waitlist on WhatsApp — guests got accurate ETAs, walked nearby, returned when their table was 5 minutes out.
- Captured birthday + anniversary on every booking; auto-triggered a WhatsApp invite 21 days before the date with a reserved-table CTA.
- Sent post-meal WhatsApp asking for a Google review on outlets where the guest had a high check size.
- Pushed daily covers, no-shows and average check by outlet to a Slack channel for the leadership group.
What changed
- 14,200 monthly covers booked through WhatsApp concierge across the 9 outlets.
- Repeat dine-in rate lifted 41% over 6 months on the back of the birthday CRM.
- No-show rate dropped 38% with WhatsApp reminders T-24h and T-2h.
- Friday-night walk-aways fell sharply once guests trusted the waitlist ETA.
- Google review volume tripled across the 9 outlets in the first quarter.
"We used to find out our regulars had a birthday last week from an Instagram tag. Now we are the first WhatsApp on their phone three weeks before, with the table already on hold."
— COO · Multi-outlet restaurant group