Zest’s new AI agent finds restaurants and books reservations over text

Zest, the restaurant discovery app that launched earlier this year, introduced an AI-powered "restaurant concierge" that operates inside text messages. Users text the Zest line at (212) 470-6067, and the agent responds with restaurant suggestions, checks availability, and books tables through connected services including OpenTable, Resy, and SevenRooms. The startup frames the move as a bet that conversational agents will replace standalone apps as the primary interface for tasks like deciding where to eat.

The concierge's recommendations draw on a distinctive data source: Zest links to users' credit cards, importing transaction data through Plaid, and focuses only on food and drink category transactions to build a picture of where users actually eat. That history, along with friends' data, lets the agent skip the typical onboarding conversation. "The agent is the product now," said founder and CEO Mario Gomez-Hall. "You text it, and it answers from your own history and your friends'. It doesn't need weeks of conversation to learn you because it starts from where you've actually been."

The feature can also be added to a group chat, where it blends everyone's dining preferences to suggest places the whole group might like. It offers an in-thread voting option to resolve indecision and can book a table for the group without anyone leaving the conversation. Users can filter by cuisine, craving, occasion, dietary restrictions, or neighborhood, and ask follow-up questions about how busy a restaurant is, whether it has Wi-Fi, or request the menu.

TechCrunch reported that in its tests, the AI performed fairly well, matching new suggestions to its stated tastes while fitting constraints like time of day, party size, and location. The company had begun testing the concierge last month but held the public launch until booking capabilities were added.

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. By moving into text messages, the startup aims to grow beyond its current base of thousands of users and to generate revenue. It is also considering expanding beyond restaurants to recommend other businesses and shopping options. What remains to be seen is whether an SMS-based concierge can scale into a durable business, how users will respond to the credit card data model at larger scale, and whether group-chat booking becomes a real habit rather than a novelty.