Daily Restaurant Inbox Digest via Gmail & Outlook + OpenAI

Get a “needs attention” digest of your restaurant inbox—every weekday morning

This n8n workflow automatically reads your recent Gmail (and optionally Microsoft Outlook) emails each weekday at 7:00 AM, uses OpenAI to categorize urgent items, and sends you a prioritized HTML digest by email (with an optional Slack post). No more scanning hundreds of messages to find what actually matters.

What this workflow does

• Schedules the run: Executes every weekday morning at 7:00 AM via a schedule trigger.
• Fetches recent emails: Loads digest settings (recipient, business name, lookback window, and keyword overrides) and retrieves the last N hours of messages from Gmail and optional Outlook.
• De-duplicates + tags: Merges and de-duplicates emails, then applies keyword-based tagging for categories such as bank/fraud, supplier invoices, payroll/HR, delivery platforms, legal/tax, and customers/reviews.
• Controls OpenAI cost: Selects up to a capped number of messages to manage OpenAI usage.
• Generates a prioritized digest: Sends selected emails to OpenAI (default gpt-4o-mini) to produce structured JSON, prioritizing urgent items and skipping promotions.
• Delivers results: Converts the OpenAI output into an HTML email plus a Slack-ready plain-text version.
• Optional Slack posting: Posts the same digest to a configured Slack channel if enabled.

Use cases

• Restaurant operators who want faster follow-up on supplier invoices, delivery platform issues, and customer reviews.
• Teams handling payroll/HR or legal/tax emails without daily inbox triage.
• SaaS operators and automation engineers using n8n to build a repeatable daily restaurant inbox digest via Gmail & Outlook.

Technical details

• n8n nodes/integrations: schedule trigger, Gmail, Slack, and conditional logic using if, set, code (plus a sticky note for workflow notes).
• OpenAI integration: OpenAI node using chat model gpt-4o-mini by default (configurable).
• Credentials required: Gmail OAuth2 (read messages and send digest), OpenAI API credential, and optional Microsoft Outlook OAuth2.