HospitalityIndustries and use cases
AI Chatbot for Catering Companies
Catering runs on quotes, not menus. A chatbot earns its place by capturing the date, the headcount, the venue, the dietary counts and the delivery window before a human touches the enquiry. It hands every allergy question to a person.
Allergies: collect, never confirm
A chatbot must never tell a customer that a dish is safe for an allergy. Not for a guest, not for a child, not as a maybe.
- It can repeat what your published menu says about a dish, exactly as written.
- It can record that a guest has an allergy and how many guests are affected.
- It must then hand the conversation to a person, with a name, a phone number and the hours.
- Ingredients change with suppliers and seasons, and cross-contamination depends on the kitchen and the day. No stored answer survives that.
Write the handoff sentence yourself. Test it with an allergy question buried in the middle of a normal menu conversation, which is exactly how it will arrive.
The 30-second answer
Most catering enquiries arrive incomplete. Someone asks whether you do office lunches and leaves out the date, the headcount and the postcode, so your first reply is a list of questions and the whole thing takes three days. A chatbot asks all of it up front, at any hour, and hands your team an enquiry it can price. That is the entire business case.
Catering is a quoting business
A restaurant sells a fixed thing at a fixed price to whoever walks in. A caterer sells a different thing every time. The same sixty guests cost wildly different amounts depending on the venue kitchen, the service style, the finish time and whether the client wants staff. Nothing about that is a menu problem.
So a catering chatbot has a different job to a restaurant one. It is not protecting the phone during service or filling tables tonight. It is qualifying a lead that might be worth a great deal and might be worth nothing, and doing it while the client is still interested. If you also operate a restaurant site, the front-of-house version is covered in our restaurant chatbot guide, and the two should not share a script.
The five facts every enquiry needs
Build the flow so a conversation cannot finish without these. Everything else is optional.
A bot that collects those five and nothing else has already earned its keep, because your reply becomes an answer instead of a questionnaire. The lead qualification pattern behind this is the same one described in automating lead qualification, applied to a job that is priced by hand.
Dietary requirements: get the counts, not the reassurance
Dietary requirements are a numbers exercise for you and an anxiety for the client. The bot should ask directly how many guests need vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher or gluten-free options, and record those counts against the enquiry. What it must not do is confirm that a dish meets any of those needs, because that is a kitchen decision made against the actual ingredient list on the day. Collecting the counts early is what prevents the frantic call forty-eight hours before service when a client remembers the two vegans.
Delivery windows and the logistics questions
Half of catering is not food. It is when the van can get there, whether there is a loading bay, how many flights of stairs, whether the venue has a lift, how long food can safely stand before service, and when you collect the equipment. Clients rarely think about any of it until you ask.
A chatbot can ask all of it while the enquiry is still fresh, and it can state your published delivery windows, your travel radius and your charges by distance. It should not invent a window for a venue it knows nothing about. State the standard, capture the constraint, let the operations person confirm.
Deposits, final numbers and cancellation terms
Money questions are asked late and avoided early, which is how disputes start. Put your terms on a page and let the bot repeat them: the deposit to hold a date, when the balance is due, the date final numbers lock, whether numbers can go up afterwards, and what happens on cancellation at each stage. Answering those plainly at the enquiry stage is worth more than any menu photo. It is also the answer to the after-hours problem, since clients read your terms in the evening; our after-hours support guide covers that pattern.
Corporate clients, planners and repeat work
Office lunches and event planners behave differently to weddings. They order repeatedly, they order at short notice, and they want yesterday's order repeated with two more vegetarians. A bot that captures a standing order pattern and routes it to your team is doing account management on a Tuesday morning. It also answers in many languages using GPT-4o and Claude on every plan, which matters if you cater for embassies, conferences or a client base that is not local. The planner side of this is covered in our guide for event planners.
What it costs
Start free: $0 forever, no credit card, two seats, 500 messages a month, one widget and the mobile app. A small operation testing enquiry capture rarely needs more in a quiet month. Beyond that, Paid plans are Starter at $25 a month and Professional at $95 a month, with 20% off on annual billing. Annual billing is 20% cheaper. Full detail on the pricing page.
Four things to set up first
Publish your bands and your minimums
Per-head ranges, minimum order values, delivery charges by distance and your notice period. People who cannot afford you stop enquiring and people who can arrive better informed. The bot can only repeat what you publish.
Script the allergy handoff word for word
Decide the exact sentence, name who the customer will reach and give a phone number in the same message. Test it as a customer would, including a question that sneaks the allergy in halfway through a menu chat.
Make the five facts non-optional
Build the enquiry flow so the conversation cannot end without date, headcount, venue, service style and a number. This is the single change that shortens quoting the most.
Send enquiries where your team already is
The enquiry lands in Slack or Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp works too, which is how many event clients prefer to talk in the last week before a job. All of it is on every plan, Free included.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the chatbot confirm that a menu works for a guest with a nut allergy?
No, and it should refuse clearly. It can repeat what your published menu says about a dish, then hand the question to a person. Ingredients change with suppliers and seasons, and a shared kitchen introduces cross-contamination that no website copy can predict. Allergy conversations belong with your kitchen, in writing, before the event.
What should a catering chatbot collect on a first enquiry?
Five things: the date, the headcount or a range, the venue or postcode, the service style you are being asked for, and a contact number. With those five your team can say yes, no or maybe within a minute of opening the message. Without them, quoting turns into three rounds of email.
Can it quote a price?
It can state your published per-head bands, minimum orders and delivery charges, and it should be clear that a firm quote follows a conversation. Anything with staffing, hire, travel or a late finish has too many variables for a bot. Give people the honest range so they can self-select, then let a human price the job.
How does it help with dietary requirements?
It collects them properly. It asks how many guests need vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher or gluten-free options and records the numbers against the enquiry. It does not confirm that anything is suitable. Collecting counts early is what stops the panicked phone call two days before the event.
What does it cost?
The free plan is $0 forever with no credit card: two seats, 500 messages a month, one chat widget and the mobile app. Paid plans are Starter at $25 a month and Professional at $95 a month, with 20% off on annual billing.
Turn half-finished enquiries into quotable jobs
EzyConn learns your catering business from your own website, captures the date, headcount, venue and dietary counts at any hour, and sends every allergy question straight to a person.
Start FreeLast updated . Plan limits described here are EzyConn's own. Nothing here is allergen or food safety advice; allergy questions belong with your kitchen and your trained staff. View more guides.