WhatsApp Business Greeting & Away Messages: Order Setup Guide
Short answer: WhatsApp Business has two built-in auto-replies, and most restaurants only ever set up one. The greeting message fires the first time someone messages you (or after 14 days of silence) and should introduce your ordering process. The away message fires whenever you can't reply — outside hours, mid-rush, or overnight — and should tell the customer what to do next instead of just apologising. Both live under Settings → Business Tools in the WhatsApp Business app, take a few minutes each to configure, and neither costs anything.
If you're only using one of them, or neither, you're leaving orders unanswered that a thirty-second setup would have caught.
Greeting message vs away message: they're not the same tool
It's easy to lump these together as "the auto-reply thing," but they solve different moments in the conversation.
| Greeting message | Away message | |
|---|---|---|
| When it sends | First message from a new contact, or after 14 days of no contact | Whenever the away schedule is active — outside hours, or always, or a custom window |
| Job | First impression — who you are, how ordering works | Traffic control — set expectations when you can't reply now |
| Sent more than once? | Rare — only resets after the 14-day gap | Every time, as long as the schedule is active |
| Good content | "Welcome, here's the menu / how to order" | "We're closed until X" or "Mid-rush, will confirm shortly" |
A new customer who's never messaged you gets the greeting. A regular who messages you at 11pm gets the away message. Get them backwards — a generic away message as someone's first-ever contact with your business — and you've made a stranger's first impression a form letter.
We'll set up the away message first — it's the one silently costing you orders right now, every night it's not configured. The greeting message matters just as much, but it only fires on new or lapsed contacts, so it's the lower-urgency fix of the two.
Setting up the away message
This is the one that actually stops orders from disappearing into a dead chat overnight. WhatsApp's own Business Help Centre lays out the setup this way (WhatsApp Help Centre — Away Messages, 2026):
- Open WhatsApp Business, tap More options (or Settings), then Business Tools → Away Message.
- Toggle Send away message on.
- Tap the message text to write it — keep it specific, not just "we're away" (scripts below).
- Tap Schedule and pick one of three modes: Always send, Custom schedule (you set start/end times and days), or Outside of business hours (pulls from your saved business hours automatically).
- Tap Recipients and choose who gets it: Everyone, Everyone not in your contacts, Everyone except… (exclude specific people), or Only send to… (a specific list).
For a restaurant taking orders, Outside of business hours plus Everyone is the combination that matters most. It's the one that catches the 9pm "are you still open?" message you'd otherwise see at 8am with no reply sent all night.
Setting up the greeting message
Same menu, different tab: Business Tools → Greeting Message. Toggle it on, write your text, and set recipients the same way as the away message (Everyone / not in contacts / except / only). There's no schedule to set — it's triggered by the conversation gap, not the clock. WhatsApp's Help Centre confirms a message from someone you haven't heard from in 14 days counts as a fresh "first contact" and re-triggers it (WhatsApp Help Centre — Greeting Messages, 2026).
That 14-day reset matters more than it looks. It means your greeting isn't a one-time welcome — it's also what a lapsed regular sees when they come back after a slow month. Write it so it works both ways: welcoming to a stranger, not weirdly formal to someone who's ordered from you a dozen times before.
Scripts you can copy straight in
Skip the generic "Thanks for your message, we'll respond soon" — it doesn't tell anyone what to actually do. These are built for order-taking specifically.
Greeting message (first contact):
Hey, thanks for messaging [Business Name]! 👋 Here's how ordering works: send us what you'd like from the menu (link below), and we'll confirm price + pickup/delivery time. Menu: [link]. Open [hours] every day except [closed day].
Away message — outside business hours:
We're closed right now — back open at [time]. Send your order anyway and it'll be the first thing we confirm when we're back, or check [menu link] to plan ahead.
Away message — mid-rush (custom schedule, e.g. Friday/Saturday dinner peak):
We're slammed right now! Your message is in the queue — you'll get a confirmation with price and pickup time within [X] minutes. No need to resend.
That last one matters more than it looks. The same "we're busy" logic that keeps a peak-hour rush manageable works just as well as a scheduled away message during your known busy windows. Set a custom schedule once and you don't have to toggle it on and off by hand every Friday.
Quick replies: the third tool worth knowing
While you're in Business Tools, Quick Replies is worth thirty seconds too. It lets you save a message under a shortcut (like /menu or /hours) and fire it with a couple of taps instead of retyping it for the fortieth time that day. It doesn't automate anything the way greeting and away messages do. But it's what makes replying to order confirmations fast enough that the away message doesn't need to cover for you during hours you're actually open. Pair it with the order confirmation templates you're already using and most of a shift's replies become two taps, not two sentences typed from scratch.
The mistakes that make these tools useless
- Leaving recipients on the default. If your away message only reaches "everyone not in your contacts," a regular customer texting you at midnight gets silence instead of a reply — because they're already saved in your phone. Check the audience setting; don't assume the default fits.
- A vague message with no next step. "We're currently away" tells a hungry customer nothing. Say when you're back, or say what happens to the message they just sent.
- Forgetting the greeting message entirely. Most restaurants set up the away message and stop there, because it's the one that feels urgent. But the greeting message is a new customer's actual first impression of how organised your ordering is — skipping it means winging that moment every single time.
- Using "Always send" for the away message when you're sometimes open. That setting sends the away reply even during hours you're taking orders, which reads as broken, not busy. Match the schedule to your real hours or use the custom-schedule option for known rush windows.
The bottom line
Two toggles, five minutes, and every order enquiry gets an instant reply whether you're standing at the till or asleep. Set the away message to your real hours first — that's the one silently costing you orders right now — then write a greeting message that matches how a first-time customer should actually order from you. If you haven't set up the rest of the ordering flow around these auto-replies yet, the WhatsApp ordering setup guide covers the "one phone, one system" basics these auto-replies plug straight into. And reducing order friction covers what happens after the reply — turning that first message into a confirmed order.