By calling a restaurant, you may accidentally end up with an AI hostess and not even realize it
Hello, this is Yulia Rogozina, business analyst at Sherpa Robotics.
Are you also fed up with crooked trading bots that ring day and night? Today I translated for you an article about how communication robots turn out to be quite useful and convenient. Although, many people still try to bypass the bot and talk to a real person. I do this too sometimes.
At the end of the article, I discuss how to get used to a new format of communication – dialogue with intelligent robots.
A pleasant female voice greets me on the phone: “Hello, Bodega restaurant, assistant Yasmin. How can I help you?
I ask: “Do you have tables on the summer terrace?” In a sad voice, Yasmine replies that, unfortunately, this Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco does not have a terrace. But these notes of sadness appeared not because of a bad day, but as a result of adjustment.
Yasmin is part of a new growing clan of restaurant digital assistants powered by artificial intelligence. And if you call one of the restaurants in New York, Miami or Atlanta, you have a good chance of getting in touch with one of Yasmine's polite robotic colleagues.
In the world of AI assistants, restaurant bots are not as well known as, for example, ChatGPT Live or Chat-4o. But the niche is quickly gaining momentum. In the United States, several startups are competing for a place in the market for artificial intelligence-based developments for restaurants.
Thus, Maitre-D AI, launched in 2024 in San Francisco, is already working with the elite Vietnamese restaurant Bodega. Another startup, Newo, is rolling out its software to restaurants in Silicon Valley. RestoHost, a company launched just a year ago, serves 150 restaurants in Atlanta, and Slang, a voice-based AI solutions developer that pivoted to restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic, earned $20 million in 2023 and continues to capture the New York and Las Vegas markets. -Vegas.
All of these platforms offer similar services: neural hostesses working 24/7 answer basic questions about dress code, cuisine, seating, and special menus. They can also make a reservation, change or cancel a reservation. In some cases, the AI will transfer the call to a live person, but according to RestoHost co-founder Tomas Lopez-Saavedra, this only happens 10% of the time. Each platform has a subscription with advanced features, such as a robot host that speaks multiple languages.
But is anyone still calling in the age of Google and online booking service Resy? It turns out they are calling. The creators of AI assistants for restaurants say that many customers still call restaurants for various reasons. “Restaurants get a lot of calls, especially for popular establishments making reservations over the phone,” says Alexander Sambvani, CEO and co-founder of Slang, a company that works with the Wolfgang Puck restaurant group, Chick-fil-A and fast food chain Slutty Vegan. . He estimates in-demand restaurants receive between 800 and 1,000 calls per month. Typically, these are those who want to book a table immediately, tourists, the older generation and those who do it while driving.
Matt Ho, owner of Bodega SF, confirms, “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. They called us with basic questions, the answers to which were easy to find on our website.” Ho looked for a solution and found it in Maitre-D. His restaurant became one of the startup's first clients in May. Matt Ho even helped test the development before launch. “This platform makes it easier for hostesses to work without disturbing other restaurant guests,” he says.
With the pandemic still fresh in everyone's minds, the hospitality industry is facing challenges related to staff recruitment and retention, as well as rising labor costs. Typically, a hostess is torn between greeting people at a restaurant and answering phone calls—some founders say replacing this less-than-high-paying position with a robot is becoming the optimal solution. “At $17 an hour you can barely pay for gas to get to work. People don't tend to stay in these positions very long,” says David Young, founder of Newo. Additionally, Young says customer interactions over the phone at restaurants are relatively simple compared to calls at spas, for example, so why not hire a “digital employee” and put them in charge of the process?
While this particular segment of AI has seen incredible growth, according to Matthew Focht, CEO of Emerging Fund, which specializes in restaurant technology, it is not without its challenges. Response delays are a sore point, Young said. My own observations have confirmed this. Many AI voice agents I contacted asked me to wait while they formulated a response, or simply paused for a long time before responding. They also became unpredictable as soon as the conversation deviated from the script – I changed the booking details or asked not entirely specific questions – the AI assistants became completely confused.
Sambwani says that when it comes to sensitive topics—say, you got food poisoning at dinner and want to vent—live hostesses are better at handling those calls. Additionally, he notes, “Some restaurant operators still have a hard time believing that AI hostess won’t ruin the restaurant experience.”
Brian Owens, co-owner of Crave Fishbar in New York with three locations in the city and the recently opened Crave Sushi Bar, believed in the future of AI, but not for long. In 2021, amid the austerity of post-pandemic reopening, Owens tried Slang, which his account manager at OpenTable told him about.
The offer sounded exciting, Owens says: “Here's your virtual hostess, she'll save you money on staff salaries, and at the time it made sense.” But when Owens began analyzing the calls, he found dissatisfied customers who were trying to contact a live employee and sometimes cursed at the chatbot. “When asking what a restaurant's atmosphere is like, you'll notice a difference between a robot and a human, because the latter will typically describe it without using keywords from the restaurant's website,” he says. “I train my staff to answer calls with a smile, and with AI you won’t get a smile.”
For now, an AI host is best thought of as a diligent team member performing simple tasks, says Sambvani, with more complex and detailed scenarios to be introduced in the future. On September 12, the company announced an integration with OpenTable that includes the ability to make reservations through the app using an AI voice agent. “If designed correctly, it can be a positive experience,” he says.
Comment
It’s hard for me, like many others, to get used to the fact that in banks, government agencies, telecom operators and many other companies, real people no longer talk to me when I call. And the request is answered by a voice menu bot or a full-fledged call center neuro-operator.
At first, this really put me off. And I broke the logic of dialogue laid down by the developers in every way, only for something digital to switch me to a living, real specialist. Although, some bots were so clumsily configured that it was really useless to talk to them.
Over time, I “tried” this technology. Or maybe it’s just that voice robots have received additional capabilities in the form of AI and have become simpler and more useful.
Now, being engaged in robotization of business processes, I look at it completely differently. And although our company does not create voice robots, we are talking about RPA and corporate chats with AI in a closed loop, I began to understand how and why it works.
I think about those people who work in call centers. This is very hard and emotionally draining work. And bots do the hardest part – they provide call dispatching. That is, they distribute calls among specialists, and sometimes relieve employees from repeating the same standard information.
Yes, if you go into unconsciousness and stubbornly demand an operator, you can ignore the service and force the person to solve your issue. But does this make sense? Or is it still worth trying to understand the logic of the developers who included 90% of the typical problems of callers to a particular organization in the communication script?
This is unusual, but you gradually get used to the fact that it is faster and more convenient.
