WhatsApp Broadcast Lists for Restaurants: Setup & Scripts
A WhatsApp broadcast list lets you send one message to up to 256 people at once. Each person gets it as a normal, private chat — not a group thread everyone can see and reply to (WhatsApp Help Centre, 2026). That's the whole appeal: it looks and feels like you texted them personally, even though you sent it to 200 people in one tap. The catch that trips up most restaurants isn't the 256 cap. It's that a broadcast only lands if the recipient has your number saved in their phone contacts first — WhatsApp states this plainly in its own broadcast-list documentation. Miss that, and you can send a perfect offer to a perfect list and nobody sees it.
Broadcast list vs group: they're not interchangeable
A WhatsApp group and a broadcast list solve different problems, and using the wrong one is why so many restaurants give up on WhatsApp marketing after one bad experience.
| Broadcast list | Group | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees the message | Each recipient, privately | Everyone in the group |
| Can recipients see each other | No | Yes, and they can message each other |
| Can recipients reply to everyone | No — replies come back to you only | Yes |
| Delivery condition | Only if they've saved your number | Automatic once added |
| Feels like | A personal text | A public chat thread |
| Max size | 256 | 1,024 |
Groups are good for a tight community that wants to chat back and forth — a regulars' club, a small pop-up crew. For sending offers to your customer base, a broadcast list wins almost every time. WhatsApp raised the group cap to 1,024 members in 2022 (9to5Google, 2022), but a bigger cap doesn't help here. Nobody wants their phone number and order history visible to hundreds of strangers, and you don't want that many people replying "is this today?" into one thread you have to scroll through.
The rule that quietly kills most restaurant broadcast lists
Here's the part that catches people out: WhatsApp only delivers a broadcast message to someone who already has your business number saved as a contact. If they haven't saved it, your message just doesn't arrive — no error, no bounce notice, nothing. You'll swear you sent 150 messages and get three replies, and the other 147 simply never landed.
This isn't a bug. It's WhatsApp's anti-spam design: you can't build a list from numbers you scraped or bought, only from people who've deliberately kept your number around. Which is actually good news once you see it the right way — it means every name on a working broadcast list already trusts you enough to keep your number. You're not fighting spam filters; you're talking to people who opted in twice, once by saving you and once by staying subscribed.
The other limit worth knowing: a broadcast list tops out at 256 recipients on the standard WhatsApp Business app. Past that, you're either running several lists side by side or moving to the WhatsApp Business API, which drops the saved-contact rule entirely in exchange for pre-approved message templates.
Getting customers to actually save your number
You can't ask "please save my number" and expect much of a response — it's a big ask with no obvious payoff for the customer. Give them a reason instead, at the moment they're already engaged.
The best moment is right after a good experience — pickup, delivery, or the order confirmation message itself:
Save this number for next time — {5}% off your next order when you message us direct, no app needed. 🙌
Or make it part of a loyalty nudge, since the two goals overlap almost perfectly:
Want first dibs on Friday specials before we post them anywhere else? Save this number and I'll message you when the new menu drops.
Both scripts do the same job: they trade a small, real perk for the one action — saving your number — that makes every future broadcast possible. Don't bury the ask in a paragraph. State the perk, state the action, done.
What to actually send (and how often)
A broadcast list survives on restraint. The fastest way to get removed from someone's contacts — and lose them from every future list — is to message daily with nothing worth reading.
A rhythm that holds up in practice:
- 1–2 messages a week, never more than three
- Lead with something time-bound: a today-only special, a limited batch, a last-minute table
- Mix offers with things that aren't offers at all — a new menu item, a genuinely useful tip, a thank-you after a busy week
- Always give an easy way out: "Reply STOP anytime and I'll take you off this list"
That last line matters more than it looks. Making it easy to leave is what keeps the people who stay actually reading your messages instead of muting your chat and never opening it again. A list of 80 people who read every message beats a list of 300 who've silenced you.
For the content itself, borrow from what already works in your other channels. The same offer types covered in our WhatsApp marketing strategies guide translate directly to broadcast — just shorter and punchier, since it's landing in someone's personal chat, not a feed they're scrolling past.
Setting up a broadcast list in WhatsApp Business
- Open WhatsApp Business, tap the three dots (or the pencil icon on iPhone) and choose New Broadcast.
- Select contacts from your phone's address book — only people already saved as contacts appear here, which is the same saved-number rule showing up in the setup itself.
- Name the list something you'll recognise later (e.g. "Regulars — Friday specials") — you can run several lists split by how customers signed up or what they order most.
- Send a message as normal. Each recipient gets it as an individual chat; there's no group thread created.
- Check delivery: a single grey tick next to a name in your sent broadcast means that person hasn't saved your number. They didn't receive it — a handy way to spot who still needs the "save my number" nudge.
Keep the list current. Remove numbers that never engage after a few months — a broadcast list isn't a database to grow forever, it's a group of people who currently want to hear from you. If you haven't got the rest of your ordering process this organised yet, our WhatsApp ordering setup guide covers the same "one phone, one system" approach for taking the orders themselves.
When 256 stops being enough
Once you're consistently filling several 256-person broadcast lists, the WhatsApp Business API starts making more sense than juggling more lists manually. The API sends via pre-approved message templates instead of the saved-contact rule. That means you can reach an opted-in customer whether or not they've saved your number — at the cost of paying per template message and a steeper setup. Our WhatsApp Business App vs API guide walks through exactly where that trade-off starts paying for itself.
Most independent restaurants, though, never actually hit that ceiling. A well-kept list of 150–250 regulars who opted in, who expect to hear from you once or twice a week, and who can leave in one word — that's not a consolation prize. For a single kitchen, a broadcast list is usually the better tool next to the API. And it costs nothing but the fifteen minutes it takes to set up your first list today.