Answer the phone in the middle of a dinner rush.
The calls arrive at 12:30 and again at 7:15, the exact minutes every host and server in the building is carrying plates. Your AI receptionist picks up, books the table against your calendar, and takes down the party and catering inquiries that are worth the most and get missed the most.
An AI receptionist for restaurants answers 24/7 in English and Spanish, books reservations against your connected calendar, captures party size, date, occasion, seating preference, and dietary notes, points takeout callers to your online ordering channel, and escalates large-party and private-event inquiries to the owner.
What a missed call costs you.
- 01Most restaurant calls land inside the lunch and dinner rush, the two stretches of the day when nobody can stop to answer them.
- 02A large-party, private-dining, or catering inquiry is the biggest ticket on the phone, and it is the one that reaches voicemail.
- 03A caller who cannot get through books the restaurant down the street rather than leaving a message.
What a missed call could be worth
Run your own numbers. Drag the sliders to match your shop, and the figure at the bottom updates as you go.
This is an estimate built from your own inputs, not a quote. Nobody can say a given missed call was a real customer, so read the result as a possibility, not a bill.
Many calls to small businesses go unanswered, and most callers never leave a message.
Not every missed call is a sale: some are spam, wrong numbers, or people you already serve. Your honest guess.
Phone callers are high-intent and convert better than a web form. The starting number is an illustrative default, not a benchmark. Your own close rate on the leads you actually reach.
For most service businesses, a single job runs a few hundred dollars. Count repeat work and referrals and a customer's lifetime value reaches several thousand. Use the number that fits you.
You can't know any single missed call was a real customer; some are wrong numbers or sales calls. But across a month, if even 45% of the would-be customers who reached your voicemail would have booked, that works out to about $928.
And the fix scales with the math: even Standard, our $399-a-month plan, runs about 43% of that estimate, roughly $6,350 a year below it.
First AI Employee's Essential plan is $99 a month. The question isn't whether every missed call is a lost job; it's whether catching them clears $99.
Start a 7-day free trial →An estimate from your own inputs, not a quote. The default customer value above is just a starting estimate; set it to your own.
Sources: Invoca's home-services call benchmarks on how often calls go unanswered (a home-services benchmark; the defaults here are illustrative and fully adjustable); CRM Magazine on voicemail behavior; Invoca's call-conversion benchmarks on how well phone leads convert.
On the call, it handles all of it.
Reservation booking
Books tables on your connected calendar with party size, date, time, occasion, and seating preference, then reads the whole booking back to the caller.
Party and event intake
Captures the date, headcount, budget, and timing on a large-party or private-dining inquiry, then pages you mid-call or warm-transfers to the number you choose.
Ordering handoff
Sends takeout callers to your online ordering channel instead of taking food orders by phone, so nothing reaches the kitchen secondhand.
Answers through the rush
Picks up around the clock in English and Spanish, records and transcribes every call with an up-front disclosure, and leaves you the notes.
In your callers' own words.
- “
Do you have a table for four tonight around seven?
- “
We want to do a birthday dinner for eighteen people in January.
- “
Are you open Sunday, and do you have anything gluten free?
Add-ons, rated for restaurants.
We rate every add-on for how much it actually earns its keep in your trade: the must-haves and the ones you can skip. Honest stars, not a sales pitch.
Stop sending restaurants callers to voicemail.
Your AI receptionist answers 24/7, qualifies the caller, and books the work, so more of your calls turn into customers instead of a competitor's.
Not for: healthcare or anyone handling protected health information. We are not HIPAA-compliant and don't sign BAAs.