Zest, the restaurant discovery app that launched earlier this year, introduced a new AI-powered “restaurant concierge” that operates inside text messages. The feature — similar in concept to other conversational AI agents like Instinct or Poke — brings personalized restaurant recommendations into an SMS thread and can make reservations without forcing users to switch to a standalone mobile app.
What the feature does
Users can text the Zest concierge at (212) 470-6067. The concierge will suggest restaurants tailored to a user’s tastes and can be added to group chats, where it aggregates participants’ preferences, offers an in-thread voting option to break ties, and books a table for the entire party through connected reservation services.
How recommendations are personalized
Zest was founded in November 2024 and raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding from Alexis Ohanian at 776 and Steve Jang at Kindred Ventures. A distinctive part of the app is that it links to users’ credit card transactions to see where they actually dine. Those transactions are imported via Plaid, and Zest says it uses only purchases categorized as food and drink to build personalized maps and lists of recommendations.
Booking integrations and testing
The concierge can check availability and complete reservations via integrations with OpenTable, Resy, and SevenRooms. Zest tested the concierge last month but delayed the public roll-out until booking capabilities were added. In TechCrunch’s tests, the AI provided relevant suggestions matched to tastes and constraints such as time of day, party size, and location, and it returned available booking times so users could finalize plans within the chat.
Business rationale
Zest’s CEO Mario Gomez-Hall frames the product shift as: “The agent is the product now.” He says the concierge starts from the user’s actual dining history (and friends’ histories) rather than learning preferences through many introductory questions, which he argues lets it learn tastes faster. The company hopes that embedding the service in texts will help it scale past its initial thousands of users and generate revenue.
Initial revenue lines are bookings and ordering: Zest currently books tables through OpenTable or Resy and plans to add food ordering later, creating transactional revenue opportunities.
Roadmap
Over time, Zest is considering expanding beyond restaurants to recommend other businesses, shopping, and services. For now, the focus is on simplifying the user flow for finding a place to eat and securing a reservation directly from messaging threads.
