AI for Restaurants and Hospitality
Booking and enquiry calls answered during service and after close, and supplier invoices read into the costing system.
The cases this gets built for
Four recurring cases across the phone and the supplier paperwork.
A produce invoice
Twenty or thirty lines, pack sizes that change without notice, and prices that moved since the last delivery. It is keyed after close, often several days after the delivery it covers.
A booking call during service
A call arriving while every line is busy and the host is on the floor. Answered and written into the reservation system, or taken as a message that reaches the manager.
A credit note against the right invoice
A short delivery or a rejected case agreed with a driver, which then has to appear as a credit against the invoice it belongs to. Matching credits back to the delivery is usually unassigned work.
The function sheet for one event
A contract, a deposit, a run sheet, dietary notes and a final invoice, each rebuilt by hand out of an email thread. The values only need capturing once.
What this is for a restaurant or hotel
The repetitive work sits in two places: the phone and the invoices. Bookings, event enquiries and the same six questions on one side; produce and protein invoices whose prices move every week on the other.
The work here answers booking and enquiry calls during service and after close, and reads the supplier paperwork into the costing system. It runs in a cloud account the business owns, and a person approves every record before it reaches the books.
Taking orders is deliberately not part of it. The phone work is booking, the standard questions, messages and a transfer to a person. Anything outside that is taken as a message with the caller’s number and reaches the manager.
Three outcomes, and one of them is always a person. Every call is logged either way.
What gets built
Two separate jobs. Most operators start with whichever is costing more.
Booking and enquiry calls answered
Calls answered during service and after close, written into the reservation system the floor already uses. A person is one step away at any point in the call.
The same six questions, answered
Hours, parking, the patio, dietary questions, whether you take walk-ins and what you do not do — answered from material you provide, with a message taken for anything outside it.
Private event and catering enquiries
Enquiries arriving by email and web form read into a structured record with date, headcount and requirements, filed for the events manager instead of retyped. These are the enquiries worth the most per message.
Supplier invoices into costing
Line items, pack sizes, unit prices and credits read into the inventory or accounting system with a person approving each batch. Prices that moved since the last delivery are flagged rather than buried.
Delivery notes against what was ordered
What arrived compared with what was ordered, with the differences queued for one look instead of found later on the invoice. Short deliveries and substitutions are the two differences that most often go unrecorded.
Food cost visible when it moves
The weekly cost picture assembled from what actually arrived, so a change in a protein price shows up that week rather than at month end. It is built from the invoices already being read, not from a separate count.
The operations manual, answerable on the floor
Staff ask how something is done — the allergen procedure, the opening checklist, the discount policy — and get an answer naming the document. Useful where new staff arrive constantly.
The weekly reporting
Labour against sales, covers and the recurring numbers pulled from the systems that hold them and sent on schedule, with a note when a source has not updated.
How the work runs
Count the calls that go unanswered
During service, after close, and at the times every line is busy. That number usually decides whether the phone work is worth doing.
Collect a month of supplier invoices
From every supplier, including the handwritten credit and the one that still arrives by fax. Pack sizes and unit changes are what the sample is for.
Build one of them narrow
Either the phone or the invoices, running alongside the current arrangement with a person checking the output before anything counts.
Turn it on in stages
After-hours calls first, or one supplier first, widening once the operator has seen how it behaves.
What decides whether this works in a service business
Thin margins and high staff turnover set the constraints the build is designed against.
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Order taking is left to people
The phone work here is booking, the standard questions, messages and transfers. Chains large enough to have run automated order taking at scale have pulled it back out of restaurants, so it is not what this gets built for.
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Units of measure are the whole invoice problem
A case, a pound and an each are three different numbers for the same delivery, and pack sizes change without notice. Getting that right is most of the engineering on a food invoice.
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Credits and short deliveries are normal
The invoice rarely matches the delivery exactly. The system produces a queue of differences for one person to clear rather than assuming the paperwork is right.
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Turnover means one-pass training
Anything staff touch has to be obvious on first use. The review and approval screens are built for that rather than for an administrator who has time to learn them.
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Calls come from noisy rooms
Real calls arrive from cars, bars and busy dining rooms, so the phone work is tested against recordings that sound like your actual callers before it goes live.
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Spend is metered per request
Cost tracks call and document volume rather than covers, so the build includes reporting on where that volume comes from. A busy season shows up directly in the bill.
Who this is for
Independent restaurants and small groups
Where one manager does the ordering, the invoices, the schedule and the phone. The invoices are usually the last of those to get done.
Multi-site operators
The same supplier paperwork and the same questions arriving in four places with four different answers, and no single view of what anything cost this week.
Hotels and event venues
Enquiries and bookings arriving at every hour, plus event paperwork that gets rebuilt by hand for every function.
Bars, cafés and quick service
High call volume, tight margins, and invoices whose unit prices move from one delivery to the next.
Frequently asked questions
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Will it take orders over the phone?
No — that is left to people. Order taking needs item-level menu knowledge, modifiers and substitutions, and it is out of scope here. The phone work is booking, the standard questions, messages and transfers.
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Will callers know it is not a person?
It says so at the start rather than trying to pass as human, and it is tested against recordings that sound like your actual room before it goes live.
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Can it book into our reservation system?
It writes into the system the floor already uses, following your rules on cover counts, slot length, notice and which tables are held back. Anything it cannot place is taken as a message rather than promised to the caller.
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Can it read invoices from every supplier?
One supplier at a time to start, then widened. Each layout is its own case, and the suppliers who change their template without warning are why accuracy gets measured rather than claimed.
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Does it work with our point of sale?
The reporting is built against whichever systems hold sales and labour. Where a supported interface exists it is used; where one does not, the numbers are read from the exports the system already produces.
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How long before it is running?
The phone work is usually a couple of weeks to a first live path. A supplier invoice build is normally three to six weeks, most of it spent on the awkward invoices.
Start with the phone or the invoices
Whichever is costing more — the booking calls, or the supplier paperwork that gets keyed after close.