New Facebook Messenger bot orders lunch for you, curates meals

OREANDA-NEWS. July 27, 2016. Since Facebook added bots to its popular Messenger app in April, there's almost a chatbot for every user whim and desire. Yahoo launched a suite of bots in July to deliver weather and news info, CNN's got one and now there's one that lets you order food.

Dining app Allset launched a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, and it's available for San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York City users. Through the bot, you can order and pay for meals, and book a table (for a max party of six). The bot will also look for nearby restaurants to dine at, and curate meal suggestions. So far, 180 restaurants across the three cities will participate in Allset's services. You can begin using its chatting services here.

"We want to bring lunch reservations directly to where people spending a lot of time chatting with friends and colleagues," said Allset CEO Stas Matviyenko in a statement. "Facebook created a great opportunity for us to offer a cross-platform service to our users available both on their phones and computers."

Though Allset combines table booking and food ordering capabilities in a single bot, there are other Facebook chatbots that allow you to do the latter already. Pizzahut and Whole Foods have their own services, and Foodbot lets you order food in the same manner as well.