What the Front Desk does for restaurants and hospitality
- →Answers the phone during service (via voice AI) and DMs and forms 24/7.
- →Books the reservation in OpenTable, Resy or Google Reserve.
- →Answers opening hours, menu and allergen questions from your published menu.
- →Routes private dining and catering enquiries to the events team.
- →Adds to waitlist and notifies when a table opens.
- →Handles reschedule and cancel with your policy applied.
Three real workflows
What the Front Desk actually replies with and does on your behalf. Every draft is trained on your last 100 messages. Every action respects the thresholds you set.
Workflow 1
Inbound
"Do you have a table for 4 tonight at 8?"
Front Desk reply
"Yes, we've got an 8:15pm 4-top by the window or 8:30pm on the terrace. Which do you prefer? Booking would be for 90 minutes."
Action taken
Checks OpenTable, offers two live slots with turn-time policy, confirms on selection, notifies FoH.
Workflow 2
Inbound
"Do you have a good vegan option? My partner is gluten-free too."
Front Desk reply
"Yes to both. Our chef's vegan pasta is fully plant-based and can be made gluten-free with our rice-based pasta. We also have a squash risotto (vegan + GF) and roasted-cauliflower main. Kitchen is fully allergen-trained, we can walk through everything on arrival. Want me to book you in?"
Action taken
Pulls the menu for allergen matches, drafts a detailed reply, offers the booking flow.
Workflow 3
Inbound
"Interested in booking your private dining room for a company Christmas dinner, 30 people."
Front Desk reply
"Fantastic. Our private dining room seats 24-40 and we do a set menu at £65 or £85 per head. I've flagged this to our events manager Priya, who will call you tomorrow to talk dates and menus. If you'd rather set up the call yourself: [link]."
Action taken
Detects private-dining keywords, routes to the events team via email and Slack, offers a booking link.
The rough numbers
Baseline
Typical mid-sized restaurant: 40 missed calls a week during service, ~40% would have converted, average cover £30 per person for a table of 4.
The loss today
That is roughly £1,900 a week or £7,500 a month in tables that went to the next restaurant on Google Maps.
What the Front Desk recovers
The Front Desk captures most of those, especially the ones outside service hours and the ones during peak when the host can't reach the phone. Your numbers will differ; we log the real ones on your account.
Further reading
Independent sources on the state of restaurants and hospitality, why response speed matters, and what the incumbents are doing.
- OpenTable ↗
The largest reservation platform globally. Publishes industry-wide booking behaviour data.
- Resy ↗
Major reservation platform with published market data.
- UKHospitality ↗
UK trade body for hospitality operators. Publishes annual industry reports and cost-of-doing-business data.
Common questions
Can it handle allergen questions safely?+
Draft-only for anything allergen-related by default. Every allergen response holds for a human review before it sends. This is deliberate; the risk is not worth automating.
Does it work with OpenTable and Resy?+
Yes, plus Google Reserve and plain calendar if you self-host bookings.
Can it answer the phone during service?+
Yes via voice AI. The agent takes the call, offers real slots from your system, and either confirms or takes the booking request for FoH to confirm.
Related industries
Same read-decide-act loop. Different action list.
New to agentic AI?
Start with the full pillar guide on how these systems work under the hood: architecture, thresholds, evals and how to build one.
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