When You Call a Restaurant, You Might Be Chatting With an AI Host
Press
Hostie handles inbound phone calls, texts, reservations, and orders—allowing floor staff to stop chasing ringing phones and focus on the guests right in front of them.
As a restaurant operator, Randall Hom experienced firsthand how challenging it can be to stay on top of inbound guest calls inside a busy dining room. Hom teamed up with his sister Monica to open Back to Back, a wood-fired pizza restaurant that serves natural wines and music on vinyl in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood. It was an instant hit—and that led to a common operational headache: missed customer inquiries.
"The thing I realize about popular restaurants is guests will try to reach out to restaurants in many different ways. During service we’d miss calls. No one was picking up the phone. Each one of those calls, emails, and DMs on Instagram is a potential reservation, lost guest, or takeout order. That’s the initial problem I witnessed," Hom said. Recognizing an opportunity to solve this multi-channel communication gap with AI, Hom connected with co-founder Brendan Wood, an engineer who had been building virtual assistant platforms at Lindy following software engineering stints at TeamFlow and Uber. Together, they began jamming on what Hostie could be.
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