When You Call a Restaurant, You May Chat with an AI Host

Dear woman a voice greets me on the phone. “Hello, I’m an assistant named Jasmine from Bodega,” said the voice. “How can I help?”

“Do you have a place to sit on the balcony,” I ask. Jasmine sounds sad as she tells me that unfortunately, the Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco doesn’t have outdoor seating. But his sadness is not caused by having a bad day. Rather, his tone is characteristic, a setting.

Jasmine is a member of a new, growing team: the AI ​​voice restaurant host. If you’ve recently driven to a restaurant in New York City, Miami, Atlanta, or San Francisco, chances are you’ve spoken to one of Jasmine’s venerable, well-known competitors.

In a sea of ​​AI voice assistants, hospitality phone agents have never received as much attention as productive consumer-based AI tools like Gemini Live and ChatGPT-4o. And yet, the niche is hot, with many budding startups vying for restaurant accounts across the US. Last May, AI voice ordering drew a lot of attention at the National Restaurant Association’s annual food show. Bodega, a high-end Vietnamese restaurant I called, used Maitre-D AI, which was introduced specifically to the Bay Area in 2024. Newo, another new startup, is currently rolling out its software to many Silicon Valley restaurants. One-year-old RestoHost now answers calls at 150 restaurants in the Atlanta metro area, while Slang, an AI voice company that started focusing exclusively on restaurants during the Covid-19 crisis and announced a $20 million funding round in 2023, it benefits. in the New York and Las Vegas markets.

They all offer the same service: an around-the-clock AI phone host who can answer general questions about the restaurant’s dress code, food, seating arrangements, and food allergy policies. They can also help with making, changing, or canceling reservations. In some cases, the agent can direct the caller to a real person, but according to RestoHost founder Tomas Lopez-Saavedra, only 10 percent of calls result in that. Each platform offers restaurant subscription categories that unlock additional features, and some systems can speak multiple languages.

But who even calls a restaurant in the age of Google and Resy? According to some of the founders of voice-activated AI, many customers do, and for various reasons. “Restaurants get more calls than other businesses, especially if they’re popular and have reservations,” says Alex Samvani, CEO and founder of Slang, which currently works with everyone from restaurant group Wolfgang Puck to Chick- fil. -A in the fast chain Slutty Vegan. Samvani estimates that centers in need receive between 800 and 1,000 calls per month. Common callers tend to be last-minute bookers, tourists and visitors, seniors, and those who do their own thing while driving.

Matt Ho, owner of Bodega SF, confirms this situation. He says: “The phones rang constantly throughout the service. “We will receive calls for basic questions that can be found on our website.” To solve this problem, after the purchase, Ho found that Maitre-D was the most suitable. Bodega SF was one of the first customers to launch in May, and Ho even helped the founders with pre-launch bug testing. He says: “This platform makes the work easier for the host and does not disturb the guests while they are enjoying their food.