ChatGPT Can Now Book Your Restaurant Table

ChatGPT can now book you a table. On 10 August, OpenAI switched on restaurant reservations inside the chat, powered by OpenTable, Resy and Yelp.

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How it works

You ask in plain language: where you fancy eating, when, how many of you, and any preferences like cuisine, budget, dietary needs or atmosphere. ChatGPT surfaces available reservation times right there in its reply. You narrow things down with follow-up questions, then book, without ever opening a separate app or tab.

Where it actually works

This is the part the headlines skate over. OpenTable bookings are available globally. Resy is US only. Yelp covers the US and Canada, and it also lets you join a waitlist rather than only grab a set time. So depending on where you live and which service a restaurant uses, your mileage will swing wildly. If you are in Europe, OpenTable is your main lane for now.

The asterisk for work accounts

One limit worth flagging: ChatGPT Work does not include restaurant reservation search. Probably for the best, given the state of some expense policies, but worth knowing if the company login is your only login.

Why OpenAI wants your dinner plans

This is another brick in the ‘ChatGPT as the app you never leave’ wall. Booking a table is a small thing, but it is a transaction, and transactions are where an assistant stops being a clever toy and starts being genuinely sticky. The Yelp tie-up is telling: Yelp licensed its reviews and photos to OpenAI less than three weeks before this booking rail appeared, so the two have been moving at speed.

Should you use it

If you already plan meals through ChatGPT, something like ‘find me somewhere quiet for six near Temple Bar on Friday’, this closes the loop nicely and saves the tab-juggling. If you are a die-hard OpenTable or Resy user, you lose nothing, since the booking still runs through the same services and their real availability. Just do not expect it to conjure a Saturday table at the impossible place. It can only show you what the restaurants have actually put up for grabs.

It is rolling out across ChatGPT plans on mobile, web and desktop, so consumer accounts should see it appear over the coming days.

Did you know: OpenTable, one of the three services now wired into ChatGPT, has been seating diners online since 1998, back when booking a table online meant tying up the family phone line.

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