Restaurants Are Hiring AI to Pick Up the Phone When You Call

Hello!

The next time you call a restaurant to book a table, you might want to double-check that you’re speaking with a real person.

That’s because a growing number of eateries are now using AI to manage phone reservations, Wired reports — an often overlooked application of the technology in the hospitality sector.

A wave of such services has emerged in recent years. Among them, according to Wired, are startups like Maitre-D AI, which launched in the Bay Area in 2026, RestoHost, now handling calls for more than 150 restaurants in Atlanta, and Slang, which shifted focus to AI solutions for restaurants last year after securing roughly $20 million in funding.

While this represents a relatively low-risk use of AI compared with more controversial applications, it highlights just how deeply the technology is embedding itself in customer-service roles once performed exclusively by humans.

Bot Backup

Developers of these AI assistants position the tools as a way to ease the workload on restaurant staff, particularly in the post-pandemic era when many venues continue to face chronic staffing shortages.

“Restaurants receive a high volume of phone calls compared with other businesses, especially if they’re popular and accept reservations,” Alex Sambvani, CEO and co-founder of Slang, told Wired.

Sambvani notes that busy restaurants — at least in the major cities his company serves — field between 800 and 1,000 calls per month. On the upper end of that range, that equates to more than thirty customers, sometimes frustrated or confused, calling every day. Handling that volume can be draining.

“The phones would ring constantly throughout service,” Matt Ho, a San Francisco restaurant owner who uses RestoHost, told Wired. “We would receive calls for basic questions that can be found on our website.”

“This platform makes the job easier for the host and does not disturb guests while they’re enjoying their meal,” he added.

Human Touch

Yet these AI systems can be slow and prone to confusion when faced with nuanced customer requests (a shortcoming also observed in AI-powered drive-thrus).

In the Wired reporter’s experience, “many AI voice agents I called asked me to wait as they were conjuring an answer, or simply remained statically silent before replying.” Changing a reservation detail mid-conversation, for instance, often caused the system to stall.

Not every restaurant owner has been convinced by the technology’s performance. Brian Owens, who tried Slang after reopening several of his New York restaurants, initially saw the appeal of cutting labor costs with AI.

After witnessing repeated customer frustration, however, he changed his mind.

“If you’re asking a robot how the vibe at the restaurant is, versus someone who is able to explain it by not using keywords — you know the difference,” Owens told Wired. “I train my host staff to answer the phone with a smile, and you’re not getting a smile when you’re using AI.”

He may have a point. For some diners, any use of AI in customer service is a deal-breaker; one recent survey found that over half of consumers would switch to a competitor upon discovering a business was using AI for such roles. In many cases, it seems, nothing beats a human voice on the line.

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