A nice woman a voice greets me over the phone. “Hi, I’m Jasmine’s assistant from Bodega,” the voice says. “How can I help you?”
“Do you have patio seating?” I ask. Jasmine sounds a little gloomy as she tells me that the San Francisco-based Vietnamese restaurant, unfortunately, has no outdoor seating. But her sadness isn’t the result of a bad day. Rather, her tone is a feature, the setting.
Jasmine is a member of a novel, growing clan: the AI voice restaurant host. If you’ve recently called a restaurant in Novel York, Miami, Atlanta, or San Francisco, you’ve probably spoken to one of Jasmine’s suave, calculating competitors.
In a sea of AI voice assistants, the hospitality industry’s call center agents haven’t gotten as much attention as consumer-grade generative AI tools like Gemini Live and ChatGPT-4o. Yet the niche is heating up, with a number of emerging 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 upscale Vietnamese restaurant I called, used AI’s Maitre-D, which launched primarily in the Bay Area in 2024. Neuroanother novel startup, is currently deploying its software to numerous restaurants in Silicon Valley. The annual RestHost now takes calls at 150 restaurants in the Atlanta metro area, while voice AI company Slang began focusing solely on restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic and announced $20 million funding round in 2023 is gaining traction in the Novel York and Las Vegas markets.
All of them offer a similar service: a 24/7 AI phone host who can answer general questions about a restaurant’s dress code, cuisine, seating arrangements, and food allergy policies. They can also assist make, change, or cancel reservations. In some cases, the agent can refer callers to a real human, but according to RestoHost co-founder Tomas Lopez-Saavedra, only 10 percent of calls end there. Each platform offers restaurant subscription tiers that unlock additional features, and some systems can speak multiple languages.
But who calls restaurants in the age of Google and Resy? According to several founders of AI voice-hosting startups, many customers do, and for a variety of reasons. “Restaurants get a lot of phone calls compared to other businesses, especially if they’re popular and take reservations,” says Alex Sambvani, CEO and cofounder of Slang, which now works with everyone from the Wolfgang Puck restaurant group to Chick-fil-A to the fast-casual chain Slutty Vegan. Sambvani estimates that popular establishments get 800 to 1,000 calls a month. Typical callers tend to be people making last-minute reservations, tourists and guests, seniors and people running errands while driving.
Matt Ho, Owner Bodega SFconfirms this scenario. “The phones were constantly ringing during service,” he says. “We were getting calls with basic questions that you can find on our website.” To solve this problem, after looking around, Ho decided Maitre-D was the best solution. Bodega SF became one of the startup’s first customers in May, and Ho even helped the founders with trial and error testing before launch. “This platform makes it easier for the host and doesn’t get in the way of the guests enjoying their meal,” he says.