Texting your waitlist: the rules in Canada and the US
· 4 min readA table-ready text is the most useful message a restaurant sends. It is also a business text, and carriers and the law in both countries have rules for it. This is the short version, with the sources at the end.
What a waitlist text is
Industry rules call it an informational message: the guest gave their number for one purpose — hearing about tonight’s table — and the text does exactly that.[5] Add a promotion to it and it becomes a marketing text, with stricter consent rules on both sides of the border.[5][7]
Which number sends it
For a restaurant texting guests in both countries, a verified toll-free number is the simple choice. Canadian carriers do not accept business texts from ordinary local numbers, according to Twilio.[1]
Toll-free verification
Before a toll-free number can send a single text to Canada or the US, the business behind it has to be verified.[2] Twilio aims to review a request within three business days.[4] The form asks for:
- Your legal business name and a registration number — required for every business type except sole proprietors.[4]
- A live website that describes the texts you will send.
- A business email address.
- How guests opt in, and sample messages.
STOP, HELP, ARRET, AIDE
In Canada, the carriers’ association lists STOP, ARRET, HELP, AIDE and INFO as mandatory, with replies in English and French that fit in a single message.[6] Honour ARRÊT with the accent too — guests type it both ways.
Consent in Canada
Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL) exempts a message that only facilitates or confirms a transaction the person asked for from the consent requirement.[7] A table-ready text reads as exactly that. The exemption covers consent and nothing else — every message must still:
- Identify the sender.[7]
- Give contact details that stay valid for 60 days — which may sit on a web page the message links to.[7][8]
- Offer a free way to unsubscribe, honoured within 10 business days.[7]
Consent in the US
Under the TCPA, an automated informational text needs the person’s prior express consent; marketing needs prior express written consent.[9] Since 11 April 2025, a guest can withdraw consent in any reasonable way. Replies such as stop, quit, end, revoke, opt out, cancel or unsubscribe count on their own, and must be honoured within 10 business days.[9][10]
What a text costs
Texts are billed per segment. A segment holds 160 characters of the basic character set (153 once a message is split), or 70 once any character falls outside it (67 when split).[11] One emoji is enough to put a whole message on the 70-character limit.
French accents are the trap for Québec. É, é, è, à and Ç are in the basic set; ê, â, î, ô, û, lowercase ç and œ are not.[12] In a message of 71 to 160 characters, one “prête” turns one segment into two or three.
Twilio’s list price is US$0.0083 a segment, plus a carrier fee of a few tenths of a cent that depends on the guest’s carrier.[13][14] DineQ passes that cost on with no markup: CA$0.025 a segment.
Checklist
- Send from a verified toll-free number.
- Next to the phone field, say what you will text and how to stop.
- Name the restaurant in every message.
- Honour STOP, ARRET and plain-language requests — at once in practice, within 10 business days at the latest.
- Keep texts about the visit. No promotions.
- Keep a page with your business name, address and contact details, and link to it.
- Keep each message inside one segment: watch the length, emoji and French accents.