A nice woman A voice greets me on the phone. “Hello, I’m an assistant named Jasmine for Bodega,” the voice says. “How may I help you?”
“Do you have outdoor seating?” I asked. Jasmine looked a little sad as she told me that unfortunately, the Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco didn’t have outdoor seating. But her sadness wasn’t because she had a bad day. Her tone was more of a setting, a backdrop.
Jasmine is part of a growing new clan: restaurant hostesses with AI voices. If you’ve called a restaurant in New York, Miami, Atlanta, or San Francisco recently, 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 received as much attention as consumer-based generative AI tools like Gemini Live And ChatGPT-4o. And yet the niche is heating up, with many emerging startups competing for restaurant accounts across the United States. 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 launched primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2024. NeuroAnother new startup, is currently rolling out its software to many Silicon Valley restaurants. RestoHost now answers calls at 150 restaurants in metro Atlanta, and Slang, a voice AI company that began focusing exclusively on restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic and announcement $20 million funding round in 2023, gaining traction in New York and Las Vegas markets.
All offer a similar service: a 24-hour AI phone attendant who can answer general questions about the restaurant’s dress code, cuisine, seating arrangements, and food allergy policies. They can also help make, change, or cancel a reservation. In some cases, the agent can direct the caller to a real human, but according to RestoHost co-founder Tomas Lopez-Saavedra, only 10% of calls result in that. Each platform offers restaurant subscription tiers that unlock additional features, and some systems can speak multiple languages.
But who calls a restaurant in the age of Google and Resy? According to some AI voice hosting startup founders, many customers do, and for a variety of reasons. “Restaurants get a higher volume of calls than other businesses, especially if they’re popular and take reservations,” says Alex Sambvani, CEO and co-founder of Slang, which currently works with everyone from the Wolfgang Puck Restaurant Group to Chick-fil-A to the fast-casual chain Slutty Vegan. Sambvani estimates that high-demand establishments get between 800 and 1,000 calls a month. Typical callers include last-minute reservations, tourists and visitors, seniors, and those who are driving to shop.
Matt Ho, the owner of Bodega SFconfirms this scenario. “The phones were ringing off the hook during the entire service,” he says. “We were getting calls for basic questions that can be found on our website.” To solve this problem, after shopping around the market, Ho found Maitre-D to be the best fit. Bodega SF became one of the startup’s first customers in May, and Ho even helped the founders run trials and tests before launching. “This platform makes the host’s job easier and doesn’t disturb guests while they’re enjoying their meal,” he says.
