WhatsApp Business API for restaurants

The consumer app is what everyone has. The WhatsApp Business app is a free app for small businesses, with a catalogue and quick replies, run from a phone. The WhatsApp Business Platform — often called the API — is the programmatic one, and it is the only one software can send from at scale.

A number can be registered on the consumer app or the Business Platform, not both. Moving a number to the Platform means giving up the app on that number, which is why most restaurants use a dedicated line.

Outside a 24-hour window opened by the customer messaging you, businesses can only send pre-approved templates. Templates carry a category, and the category decides both deliverability and price.

A receipt for an order the customer just placed is a utility template. A promotion is a marketing template. Sending marketing content through a utility template is the fastest way to lose template approval, and it is worth being strict about internally.

This is the question to ask any vendor. If receipts come from a number the vendor owns, shared across their customers, then the thread, the display name and the conversation history are theirs, not yours.

GrandPOS is a Meta Tech Provider and connects your own WhatsApp Business Account, so messages go out under your restaurant’s name and replies come back to you.

Meta bills conversations to the Business Account that sends them, with rates set by Meta and varying by country and category. That is billed to you, separately from any software subscription.

Diners must be able to stop receiving messages, and the opt-out has to actually work. The GrandPOS hosted receipt carries a one-tap opt-out, and the setting is respected for that customer from then on.

Whose WhatsApp Business Account sends the message, and whose name does the customer see? If a customer replies, where does that reply go? Who is billed by Meta for the conversation? If we leave, does the number and its history come with us?

The answers separate a genuine Business Platform integration from a vendor sending on your behalf from a shared number.

Meta assigns a quality rating to each number based on how recipients react. Blocks and reports push it down, and a low rating reduces how many messages you can send.

Sending only what a customer expects — a receipt for an order they placed — is what keeps that rating healthy, which is a practical reason to keep marketing separate rather than merely a compliance one.