"Are You a CEO, Director, or Founder interested in a Feature Interview?"
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
A nice woman A voice came over the phone, “Hello, this is Jasmine, your bodega assistant. How can I help you?”
“Do you have outdoor seating?” I asked. Jasmine sounded a little sad that unfortunately there were no outdoor seating options at Vietnamese restaurants in San Francisco. But her sadness wasn’t because she’d had a terrible day. Rather, it was a characterization of her tone and mood.
Jasmine is part of a new and growing group of AI voice restaurant hosts: If you’ve called a restaurant in New York, Miami, Atlanta or San Francisco recently, you’ve probably spoken to one of Jasmine’s polite but calculating competitors.
In a sea of ​​AI voice assistants, hospitality phone agents haven’t gotten as much attention as consumer-based generative AI tools like Gemini Live and ChatGPT-4o. But this niche is heating up, with multiple new startups vying for restaurant customers across the U.S. Last May, voice ordering AI Attracted a lot of attention At the National Restaurant Association’s annual food show, I called up to Bodega, a high-end Vietnamese restaurant that was using Mytre Dee AI, which will be released mainly in the Bay Area in 2024. NewOAnother startup, the one-year-old company now has its software installed in a number of restaurants across Silicon Valley. Rest Host Slang, a voice AI company that handles phone calls at 150 restaurants in the Atlanta metropolitan area, launched an AI service focused on restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. Announced The company, which plans to raise a $20 million funding round in 2023, is gaining momentum in the New York and Las Vegas markets.
All these platforms offer a similar service: a 24-hour AI phone host that answers common questions about your restaurant’s dress code, cuisine, seating arrangements, food allergy policies, and more. They also help with making, modifying, and canceling reservations. In some cases, an agent can connect you to a real person, but according to Tomas Lopez-Saavedra, co-founder of RestoHost, this only happens in 10 percent of calls. Each platform offers subscription levels for restaurants that unlock additional features, and some systems can support multiple languages.
But in the age of Google and Resy, who’s calling a restaurant? According to several founders of AI voice-hosted startups, many customers are calling for a variety of reasons. “Restaurants get a lot more phone calls than other businesses, especially if they’re popular and taking reservations,” says Alex Sambvani, CEO and co-founder of Slang, which currently works with everyone from Wolfgang Puck Restaurant Group to Chick-fil-A to fast-casual chain Slutty Vegan. Sambvani estimates that high-demand restaurants get between 800 and 1,000 calls a month. Typical callers tend to be people making last-minute reservations, tourists and visitors, seniors, and people running errands while driving.
Owner Matt Ho Bodega SFconfirms this scenario. “The phone is constantly ringing during service,” he says. “People are calling with basic questions that they can find on the website.” To solve this problem, after some research, Ho found Maitre-D to be a great fit. Bodega SF became one of the startup’s earliest clients in May, with Ho helping the founders with trial and error testing before launching. “The platform makes the host’s job easier and doesn’t get in the way of guests enjoying their meal,” he says.
"Elevate Your Brand with an Exclusive Feature Interview!"