AI systems that protect service — and catch the event inquiry
During service every ring competes with a full room, and the floor always wins. Buried in that volume is the catering or private-event inquiry worth more than the night's covers. We build the layer that clears the routine calls and makes sure the valuable one never dies in the queue.
Where AI earns its place in a hospitality business
The phone rings hardest at 7 PM on a Friday, which is the one moment nobody can possibly answer it.
These four have the clearest payback. The free audit surveys the rest of the business and tells you what is worth building after them — including when the answer is nothing.
The call worth thousands stops going to voicemail because the floor was full.
The information that decides whether an inquiry is real, given at the start rather than after three emails.
Hours, location, parking, kitchen close, dietary options — answered at volume during service.
Date, headcount, and event type captured and sent straight to your events lead.
What we'd actually automate
Two of the shapes that recur in hospitality business, start to finish.
- ✕Service and the phone peak together
The busiest hour on the floor is the busiest hour on the line, and the floor always wins. - ✕The valuable call is buried
A catering inquiry worth thousands arrives in the same queue as "what time do you close" and gets the same voicemail. - ✕The same questions, every night
Hours, parking, kitchen close, dietary options — answered constantly by someone who should be running food.
Friday-service call → booked site visit
Available nowTriggerCall at 7:15 PM, dining room full
- Answered anyway
- Inquiry type identified — something larger
- Date, headcount, and event type captured
- Minimum spend and lead time stated
- Site visit booked to the events calendar
- Events lead notified with the full inquiry
An inquiry that would have died in the Friday queue becomes a site visit.
Web event inquiry → proposal
Configured for youTriggerEvent form submitted at 10 PM
- Callback placed within about a minute
- Requirements and budget range captured
- Package matched from your offerings
- Proposal drafted from your pricing
- Events lead reviews and sends
You respond first, which in event sales is most of the battle.
What connects today, and what has to be built
Your AI should write into the systems you already run. Here is exactly which ones, and which ones are a build rather than a switch.
Connects today Available now
- Google Calendar
Reads live availability, writes confirmed appointments back. - Call-completed webhook
Every finished call POSTs a structured record — caller, intent, what was captured, what was booked — to any endpoint you nominate. - Zapier / Make / n8n
The usual route to a CRM we have no native connector for. - Email notifications
Structured call summaries to the inboxes that need them.
Works once set up Configured for you
- SMS confirmations & alerts
Confirmation to the customer, alert to your team. US carriers require the sending number to be registered first (A2P 10DLC); we file that during onboarding, and until it clears the same notifications go by email. - Square — live menu
Item names and prices pulled from your live Square catalogue at the start of each call, so the AI quotes your current menu instead of a copy we typed out at onboarding and nobody remembered to update. Re-read every few minutes rather than cached for a shift. Customers are matched on their phone number, or created if they are new.
Custom or not supported Custom build
- ✕OpenTable, Resy, Tock
Not connected. There is no live table inventory, so restaurant reservations are directed to your booking link or captured for the host stand. - ✕Event management / BEO systems
Custom. Captured event details pushed by webhook into your documentation workflow. - ✕Phone ordering into Square
Built, and deliberately not claimed as working yet. The order and the Square payment link are finished, tested code — a caller pays on their own phone and the paid order lands in the POS and on the kitchen display, which is the only sequence that works, since an unpaid Square order is invisible to the kitchen. What is not done is wiring it into the live phone conversation, and the A2P 10DLC registration that lets the link reach a caller by text. Until both land, the phone does not take orders, and we would rather print that than let you assume it does. - ✕Other POS platforms (Toast, Clover, Lightspeed)
No native connector. Square is the one we have built; the others are a scoped build, and Toast in particular sits behind a partner programme that costs roughly ten times what Square does to reach.
Six for Friday, one gluten free
A booking that would have been a voicemail. The receptionist finds the table, gets the dietary requirement in front of the kitchen days early rather than at the pass, answers the parking question every restaurant gets, and holds the reservation under a name.
- Caller
Hi, do you have anything Friday night? It'd be six of us.
- AI receptionist
Friday, six. What time were you thinking?
- Caller
Seven-ish? Seven thirty's fine as well.
- AI receptionist
Seven thirty I can do, seven is fully committed. Anything the kitchen should know? Allergies, anything anyone doesn't eat?
- Caller
Yeah, actually, one of them's gluten free. Is that a hassle?
- AI receptionist
Not at all. Most of the menu either is or can be, apart from the pasta courses. They'd much rather know now than find out at the table, so I'll put it on the booking.
- Caller
Oh, great. And is there parking, or is it all street?
- AI receptionist
There's a lot behind the building, free after six. The street's metered until then.
- Caller
Perfect.
- AI receptionist
Is it a special occasion at all? If it is, I'll flag it for the floor.
- Caller
It's my dad's birthday, actually. His sixty-fifth.
- AI receptionist
I'll put that on the booking. Can I take a name and number for it?
- Caller
Nate Brooks. Six one nine, five five five, oh three four one.
- AI receptionist
Thank you. Six people, Friday at seven thirty, one gluten free. If the number changes, let us know by Thursday and we'll move you to a different table.
- Caller
Will do. Thanks so much.
- AI receptionist
See you Friday.
What should stay human
- ✕Event selling stays with your people
It captures and books. The conversation that closes a wedding is one your events lead should be having. - ✕No orders and no payment
Order taking is out of scope. An order taken wrong is worse than an order not taken. - ✕Allergen and dietary questions get care
It answers from your documented information and escalates anything specific. This is not an area for improvisation.
And what the system won't do. It does not take table reservations into OpenTable, Resy, or Tock — there is no live table inventory, so restaurant reservations are either directed to your booking link or captured for the host stand. It does not take orders or payment. The strongest case here is not reservations at all: it is making sure catering and private-event inquiries never die in the Friday-night queue.
Hospitality & Events questions
What is this actually best at for a restaurant?
Two things: clearing the high volume of routine questions during service, and catching the catering or private-event inquiry that would otherwise be lost among them. The second is where the money is, and it is the reason to deploy at all.
Can it take a reservation?
Not into OpenTable, Resy, or Tock — there is no live table inventory. It points callers to your booking link or captures the request for the host stand. For catering and private events, where the calendar is yours, it books properly.
Can it take a takeout order?
No. Order taking and payment are outside what we would deploy, and we would rather say so than build something that gets an order wrong.
Build your hospitality & events AI system
Start with a free 30-minute consultation and a written audit of a hospitality business: how work actually moves through it, where it leaks time and money, what each fix is worth, and what we would build first. If the answer is that AI is not worth it yet, we say that.
Or skip the pitch — call our own AI receptionist on (858) 779-8073 and ask it anything.