Zest, a restaurant discovery app released earlier this year, is already thinking about a future where mobile apps are no longer the primary interface. On Thursday, the startup introduced a new feature. It’s a personal AI-powered “restaurant concierge” that lives inside your text messages, similar to other popular AI agents like Instinct and Poke.
The announcement reflects a broader shift in how startups think about AI, with conversational AI agents taking on tasks that previously required users to launch a standalone mobile app. For Zest, this means compiling restaurant recommendations into text so users can immediately take the next step of reserving a table.
“The agent is now the product,” explains Zest founder and CEO Mario Gomez-Hall. “When you send a text message, you get answers from your own or your friend’s history. It starts from where you’ve actually been, so it doesn’t take weeks of conversations to learn who you are,” he said.
Originally founded in November 2024 with $1.8 million in pre-seed funding from 776’s Alexis Ohanian and Kindred Ventures’ Steve Jang, the app’s unique feature is that it can link users’ credit cards to track where they’re actually eating out to understand their preferences and interests. With this data, Zest can make customized suggestions for where you might want to try next. Whether it’s in your city or suggestions of places you’d like to try while traveling.
The credit card data used in Zest’s app is imported via Plaid, a financial services company used by banks and other fintech and budgeting apps. Zest says it focuses only on deals in the food and beverage category when creating personalized maps and listings.
The startup’s latest idea is to tackle the same problem: Where should I go to eat? — from a new angle. Suggestions now come from within your text message threads, and you can use AI to check availability and make reservations through connected services like OpenTable, Resy, and SevenRooms.
To get started, users can text the Zest Concierge at (212) 470-6067. What’s even better is that you can add Zest to group chats. There you can blend everyone’s tastes and find a place the whole group will like. Here, you can also resolve indecisions with the in-thread voting feature and reserve a table for your group without leaving the conversation.
Users can ask Zest for recommendations based on a variety of factors, including cuisine, food preferences, occasion, dietary restrictions, and neighborhood, and can also ask questions about restaurants, such as how crowded they are and whether they offer Wi-Fi. Additionally, you can ask Zest to send you a menu to help you decide.
In TechCrunch’s testing, the AI worked pretty well, providing us with a suggested list of new locations that fit our tastes and also fit certain criteria like time of day, party size, location, and other factors. Finding an empty table is something other apps have been offering for years, but there’s also the convenience element of simply texting back and forth about different options and being notified of available times.
The company started testing Concierge last month, but decided to hold off on rolling it out until it could add a booking feature. In the future, the startup is looking to extend Zest beyond just restaurants to provide recommendations for business, shopping, and more.
Zest hopes that by moving to text, he will be able to scale beyond his initial few thousand users and generate revenue.
“Reservations and orders are the first revenue stream. Zest is currently reserving tables through OpenTable or Resy, food orders are also scheduled, and there are transactions to participate in there,” Gomez-Hall said. “It’s interesting because Zest learns your preferences faster than a general assistant. It starts from where you are, rather than asking questions. That’s worth much more than dinner,” he added.
If you make a purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
