Zest launches AI-powered text concierge for restaurant recommendations and bookings

Zest, the restaurant-discovery app that debuted earlier this year, announced on Thursday that it is adding a conversational AI agent to its service. The “restaurant concierge” lives inside users’ text-message threads, allowing them to ask for dining suggestions, compare options and secure a reservation without opening a separate mobile app. By moving the interaction to SMS, Zest aims to capture a broader audience and create a new revenue stream from bookings and future food-ordering services.

The concierge works by responding to texts sent to (212) 470-6067. Users can ask for recommendations based on cuisine, cravings, dietary restrictions, occasion or neighborhood, and the AI can reply with details such as current wait times, Wi-Fi availability or a link to the menu. When a group chat includes the agent, it can blend the taste profiles of all participants, run an in-thread poll to settle indecision, and then book a table for the whole party through integrations with OpenTable, Resy and SevenRooms. The service relies on Plaid to import users’ credit-card transactions in the food-and-drink categories, building a personalized map of places each person has actually visited.

Founded in November 2024, Zest raised $1.8 million in a pre-seed round led by Alexis Ohanian of 776 and Steve Jang of Kindred Ventures. The company’s core differentiator is its use of real-world spending data rather than questionnaire-style profiling, which the founder and CEO Mario Gomez-Hall says lets the AI “start from where you’ve actually been.” He added that the agent is now the product, emphasizing that it can answer from a user’s own history and friends’ preferences without weeks of training.

Zest plans to monetize the concierge through transaction fees on bookings made via OpenTable or Resy, with food-ordering commissions slated for a later rollout. Gomez-Hall noted that the speed at which the AI learns a user’s palate could be valuable beyond dinner, hinting at future monetization opportunities. The startup also sees the text-based model as a way to scale beyond its initial thousands of users, leveraging the ubiquity of SMS to reach people who may not download a dedicated app.

For founders and operators, Zest’s approach illustrates how combining proprietary data sources with conversational AI can create a frictionless user experience and open new revenue channels. The move underscores a broader industry trend of embedding AI assistants into existing communication platforms rather than building standalone apps. As Zest expands its recommendation engine to other categories such as shopping or services, its early success with restaurant bookings could serve as a blueprint for AI-driven, text-first product strategies.