A nice woman A voice greets me over the phone. “Hello, I’m an assistant named Jasmine from Bodega,” the voice says. “How can I help?”
“Do you have patio seating?” I ask. Jasmine sounds a little sad when she tells me that, unfortunately, the San Francisco Vietnamese restaurant doesn’t have outdoor seating. But her sadness isn’t the result of having had a bad day. Rather, her tone is a characteristic, a setting.
Jasmine is a member of a growing new clan: AI-voiced restaurant hosts. If you’ve recently called a restaurant in New York City, Miami, Atlanta, or San Francisco, chances are you’ve spoken to one of Jasmine’s polite, calculating competitors.
In the 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. And yet, the niche is heating up, with multiple startups vying for restaurant accounts across the U.S. Last May, voice ordering AI attracted a lot of attention at the National Restaurant Association’s annual food show. Bodega, the high-end Vietnamese restaurant I called, used Maitre-D AI, which is launching primarily in the Bay Area in 2024. Newanother new startup, is currently deploying its software in numerous Silicon Valley restaurants. RestoHost is now answering calls at 150 restaurants in the Atlanta metro area, and Slang, a voice AI company that began focusing exclusively on restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic and announced a $20 million funding round in 2023, is gaining traction in the New York and Las Vegas markets.
They all offer a similar service: a 24-hour AI-powered phone agent who can answer generic questions about the restaurant’s dress code, kitchen, seating arrangements, and food allergy policies. They can also help make, modify, or cancel a reservation. In some cases, the agent can direct the caller to a real human, but according to RestoHost co-founder Tomas López-Saavedra, only 10 percent of calls end there. Each platform offers restaurants subscription levels that unlock additional features, and some of the systems can speak multiple languages.
But who calls a restaurant in the age of Google and Resy? According to some of the founders of AI-powered voice hosting startups, a lot of customers do — and for a variety of reasons. “Restaurants get a high volume of phone calls compared to other businesses, especially if they’re popular and taking reservations,” says Alex Sambvani, CEO and co-founder of Slang, which currently works with everything from the Wolfgang Puck restaurant group to Chick-fil-A to the fast-casual chain Slutty Vegan. Sambvani estimates that in-demand establishments get 800 to 1,000 calls a month. Typical callers are people making last-minute reservations, tourists and visitors, seniors, and those running errands while driving.
Matt Ho, the owner of SF Wineryconfirms this scenario. “The phones were constantly ringing during service,” he says. “We were getting calls with basic questions that can be found on our website.” To solve this problem, after comparing prices, Ho found Maitre-D to be the most suitable option. Bodega SF became one of the startup’s first clients in May, and Ho even helped the founders with trial and error testing before launch. “This platform makes the host’s job easier and doesn’t disturb the guests while they enjoy their meal,” he says.
