How Restaurant AI Captures Missed Sales
Every unanswered restaurant phone call could represent a missed reservation, takeout order, catering inquiry, or private event opportunity.
In this episode of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast, Roger Beaudoin speaks with Cliff Cate, Vice President and General Manager of Yelp for Restaurants, about how AI-powered restaurant tools can help operators capture more sales while allowing employees to focus on the guests directly in front of them.
Cliff explains how changing consumer search habits are affecting restaurant discovery. Diners are increasingly using conversational AI tools to ask detailed questions about menus, dietary options, hours, parking, and special occasions. That makes accurate restaurant information more important than ever.
The conversation then turns to Yelp Host, a voice AI solution designed to answer restaurant phone calls, provide information, make reservations, manage takeout orders, and respond to multiple callers at once.
According to Cliff, approximately 70% of the calls analyzed by Yelp are connected to revenue-generating activities. If those calls go unanswered during a busy shift, the potential sale may disappear with them.
Roger and Cliff also discuss how AI can support hospitality instead of replacing it. By handling routine and repetitive calls, the technology frees restaurant employees to welcome guests, manage the dining room, and deliver a better in-person experience.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Why unanswered restaurant calls represent lost revenue
How AI is changing the way diners discover restaurants
Why your Yelp profile, hours, menu, and restaurant details must remain current
How Yelp Host answers multiple calls simultaneously
How voice AI can book reservations and answer wait-list questions
How restaurants can accept commission-free takeout orders through POS integrations
How AI can identify catering and private-event opportunities
How restaurants can customize greetings, voices, accents, and brand personality
How Yelp Host supports conversations in 17 languages
How call transcripts, summaries, and analytics reveal what guests want
Why AI can improve both phone service and in-person hospitality
How Yelp Guest Manager and Yelp Host work together
What restaurant operators should expect during onboarding
Capturing the Sales Hidden in Restaurant Phone Calls
Restaurant phones often ring during the busiest moments of service. Hosts may be seating guests, managing a wait list, helping new employees, or handling takeout orders.
Unfortunately, the caller does not always wait.
Yelp Host is designed to answer every incoming call, including multiple simultaneous calls. It can respond to common questions about hours, menus, specials, parking, and dietary needs. It can also assist with reservations, wait-list inquiries, and food orders.
That means fewer callers are sent to voicemail, placed on hold, or lost to another restaurant.
Making Your Restaurant Easier to Find Through AI
Diners are no longer searching only for broad phrases such as “pizza near me.” They are asking detailed questions based on their specific needs.
They may search for:
A brunch restaurant with vegan options
An Italian restaurant open Sunday afternoon
A restaurant with accessible parking
A location offering happy hour
A restaurant serving a particular dish
Cliff recommends keeping your Yelp profile complete and accurate, including your hours, menu, services, amenities, and other restaurant attributes. This information helps traditional search platforms and newer AI tools understand when your restaurant is a strong match.
He also suggests searching for your own restaurant using tools such as ChatGPT to see how it is currently being described and recommended.
AI That Supports Hospitality
The purpose of restaurant AI is not to eliminate personal service. Its greatest value may be giving employees more time to provide it.
When team members are not running back and forth to answer repetitive phone questions, they can concentrate on greeting guests, supporting the dining room, and creating a stronger experience.
Restaurants can also customize the AI host’s greeting, voice, tone, and language so the phone experience feels consistent with the restaurant’s personality. A caller can still request a transfer to a restaurant employee when human assistance is needed.
Better Data From Every Call
Yelp Host can transcribe, summarize, and categorize restaurant calls, giving operators a clearer picture of why customers are calling.
The reporting can reveal:
The volume of calls your restaurant receives
The different types of incoming calls
How many callers ask about reservations
How many callers want to place takeout orders
Which questions customers ask
Where additional information or training may improve future calls
This gives operators valuable information they may never receive from a traditional restaurant phone system.
Turn More Calls Into Revenue
Cliff shares how restaurants are using voice AI to capture opportunities they previously missed. Yelp has seen some customers increase takeout volume by more than 20%, while others have uncovered substantial call demand they did not realize existed.
The system can also help identify high-value opportunities such as catering inquiries and private events. Instead of losing those prospects during a hectic service, restaurants can collect the caller’s information and ensure the appropriate employee follows up.
Restaurant AI is developing quickly, but the opportunity is already practical: answer more calls, capture more sales, and give your employees more time to deliver outstanding hospitality.
Yelp Guest Manager and Yelp Host
Yelp Guest Manager is a table-management system that helps restaurants manage reservations, table availability, and online wait lists.
Cliff explains that Yelp Host was first introduced to existing Yelp Guest Manager customers because of the connection between the two products. Yelp Host can access reservation availability, book reservations, and tell callers about the restaurant’s current wait.
Cliff also notes that some restaurants still receive 20% to 25% of their total reservations by phone. Answering those calls consistently can help restaurants capture reservations they might otherwise miss.
Commission-Free Takeout Orders
Yelp Host can connect directly with a restaurant’s POS system to take food orders over the phone.
Cliff explains that Yelp does not add additional commissions to these orders. This gives restaurants another way to capture takeout sales while minimizing the third-party fees often associated with online ordering platforms.
A Simple Onboarding Process
Restaurants receive help from Yelp’s restaurant success team during onboarding. This includes configuring the greeting, voice, tone, available information, and the actions the AI host can perform.
According to Cliff, the initial onboarding conversation can take approximately 30 minutes, and a restaurant may be able to get Yelp Host running the same day.
He recommends that operators continue reviewing their calls and reporting after launch. Restaurants can use what they learn to add information and improve how the AI host handles future conversations.
Learn More About Yelp Host
Learn how Yelp Host can help your restaurant answer calls and capture additional revenue:
https://business.yelp.com/rockstars
@yelp and @yelpforrestaurants
About Cliff Cate
Cliff Cate is the Vice President and General Manager of Yelp for Restaurants. In this episode, he shares how Yelp’s restaurant products help operators manage restaurant discovery, guest information, phone calls, reservations, wait lists, and takeout ordering.
About Restaurant Rockstars
The Restaurant Rockstars Podcast helps restaurant owners and operators build stronger teams, increase profitability, improve hospitality, and run more successful restaurant businesses.
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Smithfield Culinary serves up perfect proteins for every dish, every daypart like Smithfield’s new ready to eat select bacon, new ground chorizo or the broadest portfolio of pork. When you partner with Smithfield, you serve what you love and your guests will love what you serve.
In a busy restaurant missed calls mean missed sales opportunities. Yelp Host is an AI phone answering service that handles reservations, waitlists, and takeout orders 24/7. Yelp Host Speaks 17 languages, handles multiple simultaneous calls, answers questions, books tables and sends everything right to your kitchen.
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What if your restaurant is losing revenue every time the phone rings? Think about Friday night. Your hosts are slammed. The phone's ringing. No one can pick it up, and on the other end could be a reservation, a $100 takeout order, or a $1,000 catering opportunity. Today, AI is changing that, and it's not about replacing hospitality.
It's about capturing the sales you're already missing while freeing your people to take care of the guests standing right in front of them. My guest today is Cliff Cate, the GM of Yelp for Restaurants. We're gonna show you how AI is becoming one of the most powerful new tools in the restaurant business.
And if you're finding value in our show, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. Now, on with the show.
Cliff, welcome to the show. Thanks for being with me
Hey, Roger. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here
You're a wealth of information, and this topic is going to be around AI-powered tools. And I know there's a lot of intimidation out there. Some of our audience are still just getting their feet wet with AI. And what's really important is y- having a tool that's convenient for guests, convenient for the staff, but enhances hospitality without replacing it.
And one of the biggest challenges we started to talk about was the labor shortage and retention issue. So let's talk about some tools that really, remove that pain point, enhance hospitality, and just help operators rock and roll their business, let's start with where Yelp really started and a Google search and diners because, as you mentioned, guests are looking for more sales.
I'm
Are looking for more sales
Yeah. The number... I, when I talk to restaurants every day it's the obvious thing. What's the thing you need help on the most? And it, nine out of 10 times it's, "I want more diners to come into my restaurant," or, "I want more diners to order food from me. I need to grow my revenue." As you all know the NRA just came out, the s- National Restaurant Association just came out with a study, I think last month, showing that e- expenses are up 40% from 2019,
Oh,
So it's hard.
Yeah. And, Yelp at its roots, 22 years in now, was this core resource for consumers t- to find great local businesses, in particular restaurants in their communities or when they're traveling. So Yelp still provides that service, but what is changing is the tools that consumers and diners are now using to find the next place they want to go eat, the, the date night they want to go on, the place they want to cel- celebrate an anniversary or the place they just want to pick up a, a hamburger, right?
So it used to be they would go to Yelp or they would go to Google, you'd do a search and you'd get this long list of potential places to go. That's still happening, but the percentage of consumers that are doing that are shrinking, and where they're going now are the consumer AI tools, like ChatGPT.
And it's fundamentally different, kind of the consumer interaction there. It used to be, "Show me pizza, in my town," right? Now the search in AI is, "Show me a brunch spot that has some vegan opportunities, that also has handicap parking." The... What consumers are searching for is much more natural, it's longer
And what these ChatGPT tools and other AI tools are doing is showing a much more condensed list of options. So this is important. Consumers are starting to trust these tools more and more, but the tools are giving them one or two or three answers. And the way that consumers are interacting with them is much more complex.
These longer searches. So what does that mean for restaurants? How do you be found? How do you be relevant? How do you make sure that your restaurant is showing up in these new tools? What we found at Yelp is one of the most trusted sources of information for ChatGPT and these other tools. So the first thing I would suggest is real simple.
It's free. Go to Yelp and make sure your Yelp page is up to date. It has things like hours, what your specials are, your menu. Think about what consumers are searching for. Again, back to my example of kind of brunch, vegan handicap parking. Those are all attributes that you can make sure that you have available, so you can show all, everything that you offer to consumers.
So- That, that doesn't cost you anything. It's something you should be doing anyways. Just keep that up to date and you're gonna just be a lot more available to these new tools
I would make that part of a marketing strategy because as you mentioned, it's free, but it's your profile. It's-- You're out there in the world, and the more information, the more detailed information that y- that AI can scrape and then put in, in, put into that profile to keep it up to date all the time.
When you have new changes of any kind, you put it in there, and AI's gonna find it, and that
Powerful
Yeah, and it's thinking about Yelp not only as your, as a marketing landing page that our consumers are finding, but also this source of data and truth for all these new consumer AI tools that are happening
That's really powerful stuff, and that's not intimidating at all. That's just basic stuff. It's
Exists. You just wanna make sure that it's up to date and it's got all the available information.
Yep
know, it's, where do reviews fit into that? Because I know that traditionally people do look for, five-star review places.
So you get a list of places, and
Yeah
the ones with the highest reviews show up higher up and all that kind of
Yep
automatically happening. That hasn't changed?
Yes. No, it hasn't changed. And what you'll see ... I, again, the second piece of advice is for restaurant owners, just spend 10 minutes, open up ChatGPT, it's free, consumer tool and search for your restaurant. And see now they're starting to summarize all the profile information about your restaurant and the reviews.
So you wanna see how you're currently showing up today in those,
Tools
Fantastic. That creates an interesting connection to a majority of this conversation. And if I go back in my own experience, I had five high-volume restaurants. I had multiple hosts, and yeah, there was occasionally somebody called in sick at the last minute. You might have been one person down.
I had multiple phone lines. The phone is ringing off the hook. Two hosts, one person is getting a to-go order in the kitchen. The other host might be seating a guest. Now the phone is ringing, and that's a lost opportunity. So let's talk about, Yelp Host. AI isn't just changing how diners find restaurants.
It's also changing how a restaurant operates. Tell me how Yelp Host fits into that broader transformation.
Great question. So Yelp launched a new product, w- we refer to as Yelp Host, 10 months ago. And the goal there is to help restaurants answer the phone more effectively. So it is a voice AI product that now answers the phone for you. Basically, you f- you forward your phone traffic to Yelp Host. So it's your first
It's gonna be the person that's gonna answer the phone. And as you talked about, that scenario of you, maybe you've got two hosts. Maybe one is, it's their first day, and they don't know the menu specials, and they don't know your hours, and they don't know you can park across the street, right? But the phone, what we see is the phone tends to ring at the same time it's the busiest in the restaurant.
So that kind of scenario of a host sitting a guest away from the phone, and the phone's ringing in the background is very challenging. And the reason it's a problem for restaurants is When the phone's ringing, what we find is most phone calls are incredibly high-intent questions and transactions.
"Can I make a reservation tonight? Do you have openings for four people in an hour? I wanna make a takeout order." Those are ... If you don't answer that call, that's a missed revenue opportunity, first and foremost. So what we're finding is being able to answer ... A Yelp host answers every phone call that comes into the restaurant, even if there's five simultaneous phone calls at the same time.
Think Friday night, 6:00. A lot of that, those phone calls might even go busy. So we're answering all the calls. It's trained exactly on your best practices. So if you have a manual, you're using today to, to train your host. In addition, we're training all on the Yelp data that we already have on the restaurant.
So it can present itself as the most knowledgeable way to answer all the phone calls that come its way. And most of those calls we're seeing are pretty standard, repeatable things. Things like hours, questions about their menu, questions about special, is there a happy hour? And then it's, can ... Additionally it's more transactional.
"Can I make a reservation? Are you on a wait right now?" So our Host product ties all into a, into not only the Yelp reservation system, but OpenTable, and so we have full access to know what reservation availability is and make reservations. Additionally, it can handle all food ordering, so it can tie into your POS system and take food orders right via the phone.
Meanwhile, those two hosts that we just talked about, one that's frantically, trying to make sure they're doing a good job on their first day, the second one's seating a, a party of six they can continue to do what they do best, which is provide great hospitality and be in front of the customer.
It's ... We just- Host just surpassed our millionth phone call in less than 10 months of launch, and it's growing over 30% month over month now. So we're seeing all this great adoption that we're ... we couldn't be more excited about.
Yeah, that's really powerful stuff, especially the enhancement to the hospitality. Now, let's talk about the data that exists out there in the internet and on your Yelp profile and all that. What additional information needs to be implemented by the restaurant? And, or AI just continues to learn over time, of course, but you
Yep
your best foot forward the minute you adopt Yelp Host.
You just started using it 10 minutes ago. What's missing versus what needs to be entered over time or a restaurant needs to implement to make it not miss any questions that might be vital?
Great. I think that's a great question. And again, AI has this air of intimidation. It's a new technology, right? So I'm ho- I hope that we can show that there are e- these easy steps you can take that aren't technical in nature and not complicated. So when it comes to updating information, again, put yourself in the diner's shoes.
Now that they're searching in this more verbose way what are the types of things that they're gonna be searching for? Hours, for sure. "Help me find an Italian restaurant that's open on Sunday at 4:00 PM that has handicap parking that also has a, a happy hour." So these sort of- the terms you want to be able to make sure that all these attributes about your business.
Do you have handicap parking? Do you have a happy hour? Make sure your menu's up to date. But I would first and foremost make sure your hours are up to date. That's something you should already be doing, on Yelp and Google and other platforms. So those basics really matter. And then all the other attributes that Yelp makes it very easy to g- for you to go checkbox to make sure you're included.
And then lastly, menus. Your menu information is incredibly important because more and more now with this longer search terms that people are doing, they're asking a lot of questions, not only about are you open, but are there specific dishes? Is it vegan? Gluten-free, et cetera. So all of that you want to be available so that you can best represent your restaurant.
And again, not hard. It ... Yelp makes the, it very easy to administer and keep these, this information up to date.
What a- what about guardrails and protection for wacky questions?
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In a busy restaurant, missed calls mean missed sales opportunities. Yelp Host is an AI phone answering service that handles reservations, wait lists, and takeout orders twenty four seven. It can answer your restaurant's phone, take your takeout order using AI, and send orders straight to your restaurant's POS, all with no commission fees.
Yelp Host speaks seventeen languages, handles multiple simultaneous calls, answers questions, books tables, and sends everything right to your kitchen. Yelp Host helps staff focus on your guests and delivering true hospitality. Yelp Host integrates with OpenTable, Yelp Guest Manager, and major POS systems.
Want real results? Buttermilk Ranch saved eighty hours of labor per week. The Metropolitan booked five hundred plus tables in three months. Go to business.yelp.com/rockstars
know, it could be "I need directions to your restaurant and I'm gonna get in a rocket ship and fly around the backside of the moon, and how do I get there from there?"
Just something stupid.
Yeah.
that built in, and is it a
Yes
courteous answer so that it, you
Yeah. Yeah, it is, it's interesting. I listen to a lot of phone calls to make sure that the, they're audited correctly and the quality is there. We review these calls all the time with our customers. I think the main thing, the guardrail we built in from the beginning is that you can always get back to a human at a restaurant.
So if you're calling in
The agent isn't helping you in the way that you want to, it's very easy to ask, and a lot of times the agent prompts you to say, "Would you prefer if I transfer you back to the restaurant?" So when we designed the product, that was like a core principle that you could easily get back to the restaurant
We talked about marketing and your profile earlier, and you can't have too much marketing, cost-effective marketing. This is also a branding tool where
You can make it feel like it's not AI and it's not something artificial. It's literally part of your brand, and you can customize the voice and, let's talk about that because multiple language capability here, and you can customize the voice.
Tell me about that.
Yeah. So t- I love the branding angle you just mentioned. But first off, again, meeting your customers where they're at. Today, Yelp Host supports 17 languages. So any of those 17 languages that are spoken, the host immediately turns and is able to have a conversation in that language, and then it translate that back into English for the staff in the restaurant.
A, an, an interesting learning that we had early on is how do you make sure that Yelp, the caller knows that they can speak in a certain language? So we've spent a lot of effort having different voices and different tones. So you can think of your favorite Thai restaurant that you call into.
What are the cues that if you spoke Thai, you knew that the person on the other end of the phone spoke Thai? It's usually an accent. So we've developed a number of accented voices that visually or give the caller a cue that maybe this, we can speak Thai in this case. And then on the branding side, we've got several restaurants that have very, brands around either the personality, the chef owner, and in some cases they want to clone the voice of that personality.
Or maybe they've got a host that's worked there for 20 years, and it's a Southern restaurant as an example. So basically trying to take on the brand and the personality the voices now, we can tailor these voices so that it matches the brand of the brand of the restaurant.
Yeah, that's wonderful. Gosh I can't imagine it being more natural than that, with the voice recognition and the different language capabilities. That's just welcoming to a guest and not making them feel, like I have to be understood by the person on the other end.
Just a wonderful thing.
Yep
talk about, what's really powerful as long as we're on the branding and marketing topic. This actually can give you metrics as well over time, right? And when are the busiest times that calls come in, and what are the most popular menu items and, all those things.
Let's talk about that. Missed calls that are reduced. Me- metrics are really important to restaurants, I think, and owning that data, understanding that data, and using it to market as well.
What I'm finding is, and you might find this f- interesting or funny, when
Yeah
to restaurants a lot- one of the common questions I ask is, "How many calls do you get? What's a typical Friday? How many calls do you get in a week?" I can tell you most the answer is, "I'm not sure. I don't know."
And so Host, because it transcribes all of the, the calls ... It used to be if you were the manager of a restaurant and you had a new employee and they were answering the phone, the way that you did quality control is you listened in on one side of that conversation, and then you could coach them r- right in the spot, right?
Yes
with Host, though, we capture every phone call, we transcribe them, we summarize them, and we categorize them, and then we make all of that available to the restaurant employees, the manager, whoever has permission, so that they can go and see a chronological list of the calls. They can re-listen to those calls.
They can read summaries. And then they get analytics around that. Again, fancy word, but just reporting on what are the types of calls I'm getting. 10% of my calls are about hours, 15% of my calls are about takeout. I got f- 13% of the calls are about reservations, et cetera. What we're finding in our data is that 70% of total calls are revenue-generating calls.
So they're either reservations, inquiries about if they're open, wait list inquiries, takeout orders. So most of the calls that are, that restaurants are getting are driving revenue for the restaurant and a lot of restaurants don't know it because they don't have a real sense for all the calls they're getting.
So it's this added value of really summarizing and giving the statistics of all the calls.
That brings up an interesting point. Those are some missed revenue opportunities for sure, but there's also restaurants like mine. We did private parties and events. We did
Oh yeah.
These are all
Yeah
calls that would come in, and sometimes you wanna talk to a live person. Now, there's a feature in Yelp Host that can forward a call to
Yeah.
in charge of those things, right?
Yeah, we
for it? Or how does that work?
It the host, the agent is really smart about catering and large parties, 'cause it is such a large revenue opportunity for restaurants.
It is
and we handle this in a couple ways. We can within the configuration we can forward it to a, a phone number. As soon as the conversation starts to happen we can say, we can prompt, "Oh, you're look- it looks like you're looking to celebrate your anniversary for 20 people.
Let's get you to our catering person." And many restaurants have a dedicated line or a person that w- it can be transferred to. Otherwise, we'll summarize that call and flag it as a catering opportunity. So it makes it really easy to get that call to the right person at the right, right time.
So let's talk about the reservation piece and how it connects so that it knows what existing reservations are. Then there's cancellations, last minute. It's like it has to keep up with all of this. Can we walk
Yep.
step?
Yeah. It's as simple as thinking about the reservation widget that's probably on your website today. It shows the availability that you as a restaurant want to be available. It only allows you to book reservations when you do have availability. Yelp Host is tied directly into that.
So both Yelp Guest Manager and OpenTable, and there'll be others down the road. Our goal is to tie into all the systems that restaurants use today. We wanna make sure that we can plug into everything. And what Host has access to those systems, it can add reservations, check availability, leave notes, and even go deeper.
And so a lot of reservation systems have different sections within a restaurant, outdoor seating versus the bar versus, a private room. We have access to all that information, and we give the caller the ability to make their reservation in, in, in any of those locations also. And one of the common use cases we see is the we're running late call.
You ... I'm sure you've been there.
Yes.
got, you've got your, you've got your partner in, on the, in the call, in the phone, you, some kids in your car, and you've just got out of the house 10 minutes late, and you don't wanna lose your spot, so you call ahead to the restaurant. We handle that really well.
We put some notes within the reservation so the host can see it very easily and hopefully keep that table ready for you since you're gonna be late
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We started this conversation talking about sales and the importance of sales and butts in seats and d- increased sales every single day, hopefully. It was really important when I owned restaurants to train every front of house person in menu knowledge, knowing the menus inside and out, as well as restaurant knowledge, so that we could treat every guest like the most important guest and deliver hospitality, but also not miss sales opportunities.
So suggestive selling, upselling was very important.
Talk about Yelp Host's capabilities to upsell, make suggestions, maybe gather in... I don't know if it can do this, and you can answer the question, but our hosts used to get a ta- a takeout order on the phone or a delivery order and basically they would ask questions how many people do you have to feed?"
and "Do you have kids?" and "Did you know that we have this and this?" and then make suggestions that we
Yep
cash cows, really profitable items, things we wanted that would enhance the things that they already ordered. But it had to come across naturally as a, as an addition that would m- give you a better experience.
Let's talk
Yeah.
that works, the upselling
Yeah
the natural sales suggestion piece. How does that work?
Yeah. Yeah. So first off, the host has full access to all your me- m- menu data. And for us, that typically lives in the POS system. So the first step is just having accurate information and what is available, if something's not available, not offering it so that the order gets correct. So I think that's first and foremost a foundation of the right orders.
Th- think about training your host. What if that seasonal item is out of stock or you've moved on? You don't wanna offer things and talk about things that are no longer available in the kitchen. The second is, yeah, putting together packages. Think about a pizza place. A- and you can have a natural conversation with the host that the
There's four of us dining what do you suggest? Do you have some suggestions for us? So it might be a pizza, wings, and, drinks. So the ability to think naturally, the s- way a normal host would of putting together, based on the party size, a few recommendations to to suggest. We also have access to what are your popular dishes.
So that question of "What's good tonight?" Host has full access to what are your top sellers, what works really, what have been the favorites and can talk freely about all of that information. And I think more and more where we're in the early stages of is I think what the host with voice AI has an advantage over the human host is we can easily recognize repeat callers.
L- let's say you've got your favorite Friday spot, and you're always picking up a pepperoni pizza. You do that once. You put in a call. It it knows my phone number. I call it next Friday. It's like, "Hey, Cliff. Great to see you. A large pepperoni pizza again?" And that call can go from, a five-minute phone conversations to a 45-second phone conversation because we're starting to personalize the experience because we can recognize the caller.
Though that's where we're very close to being- ... and then the next step.
So that's really powerful. That's like VIP service right there,
Totally
a caller. How far can that go? Can it recognize a person and ask about their family? Or, "Hey, you got an anniversary coming up. Can I make a reservation for you?" And it's is it unlimited where this is going?
I, it, it's, and because of the rate of change in AI all of those examples you gave, anniversary, birthday, those all live in your POS system or, or your reservation system. So that information is available. I think we're gonna get there very quickly. It's not something we're doing today, but I could see that very quickly
Yeah, that's super powerful. I'm sure it's gonna be a constant evolution because this isn't just a product that stands now. It's just gonna keep improving and evolving. And
More. The more restaurants that are using this product, it's like, "Oh, this one's doing this. Let's add that feat-" it's like, wow. There's
Yeah.
AI. It's crazy.
Yeah, and
about intimidation, but it's really a valuable tool on the good side with so many upsides to restaurants right now.
'Cause it's your best trained employee. It's con- One, it's constantly learning.
Once you initially set it up we try to make it really easy to set up. So we're already drawing from all of the information we have about the restaurant from their Yelp profile, review data, et cetera. And then you can add training to it.
But like I said we're tracking phone calls over time, so there's like a recursive... There's a learning, constant learning that is happening to the host that's getting better and better over time. And then I think the same thing I'd say is when that Friday busy shift, you've got...
As a host, you've got 10 people in front of you. You're stressed out. You're trying to seat some people. It, that host might not have the best, hospitality and shortness when they're picking up the phone. The AI host can talk to you as long as you want. It's always gonna have the same personality, the same tone, the kinda same level of conversation.
So this level of hospitality that it can, they handle on the phone also I b- we're seeing improves the hospitality in the restaurant of the employees 'cause they're freed up from having to run back and pick up the phone. So it's beneficial on both sides.
I'm seeing this, and I'm sure our audience is too, that this is both a sales tool and a marketing tool combined, and it just keeps getting better. But let's talk about the sales piece, and let's try to put some more metrics to that because we talked about missed calls and the rev- the lost revenue opportunities from so many different things.
A missed reservation, a missed to-go order, a missed catering or private party, all those things. So there's a benefit there, but then there's also this basically can augment your labor and perhaps reduce your labor cost as well. Do you want to speak to any of those things in terms of what you're seeing with restaurants' savings and increased revenues and cost savings and all those things?
Because that's clearly part of this.
Oh, big time. Big time. O- one of my f- I love talking about customers and some of the successful customers we have. And one of my favorites is Buttermilk Ranch in Nashville. It's both a high-end bakery, bun- and brunch spot, and they have a massive catering business also associated with it.
They're getting 6,000, 7,000 phone calls in a month, and what they realized, they didn't realize it until they started using YellHost, is they were missing a lot of those calls. So they, we've already talked about this, but the catering opportunities, they were missing a significant number of those.
And once they realized kind of the volume of calls they were getting we took a look at their data over the last six months of usage. And the owner/chef ha- has said that we're saving them 80 hours of labor a day. Because of the volume of co- phone calls they were getting, they had to staff almost a half-time person every week just to answer the phones, and they weren't even able to answer all the phone calls.
So there's kinda true labor. That, that individual is now doing other th- other things within the restaurant and able to help more with the catering orders, the to-go orders, greeting within the restaurant, and actually up, up-level the level of hospitality they're providing in the restaurant itself. I think that's a great example.
There's a lot of examples like that, and it's really freeing up the staff to do what they do best within the restaurant in front of their customers.
And there's also table bookings and reservation increases that have been tracked by your customers, right? Over the past couple of months, it's like we've done X number of increased reservations based on this capability
Yep, yep. Like I said, our data shows 70% of phone calls across all of our data set are revenue-generating calls. So that's either, again, reservations, takeouts, et cetera. So we're able to capture 100% of those. Again, the phone, multiple people might try to call at one time. We're able to capture 100% of those.
And we've seen with some of our customers their takeout volume going up over 20%. And that is real bottom-line impact that they're now able to capture more consistently and effectively
Can you walk me through or walk us through a typical call? And I'm gonna give you a scenario here. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to train all of my hosts to ask some questions, make some suggestions, whether it was something really profitable, something that were signature items that we really wanted everybody to know about, even if they're a first-time visitor. It was really important for every guest, whether they called in over the phone, to be welcomed, first of all. "Welcome to my restaurant," as if they're already walking through the door, even though they're on the phone. And then, y- you're taking their order you're getting information about what they need, and then you're adding to that by saying, "Did you-- would this, be a pleasant addition to your meal?"
Whatever it
Yeah.
like,
Yeah
the experience of, whether it's a Thai language or it's French or Spanish or just Eng- plain old English, doesn't matter. It's the AI answering, and I'm the caller calling in, and what's my impression first of this technology?
Even thinking of it as technology, thinking of it as an extension of the brand. This is like a real person that's got a really cool British accent, whatever it
Yep
Can you walk us through the experience?
Yeah I love this question. First off we put a lot of thought into this with our customers during the onboarding process. So we've got a team of people, the experts that have learned and know what works best for restaurants. But a lot of that is information we need from you on your brand.
What's important to you? What represents hospitality? How do you want callers to feel when they're calling you? So in the f- in the early stages of this onboarding process, again, this is a half-hour call. It's not a, a long process.
We specifically first talk about the greeting, the initial greeting.
That's fully customizable, so you can configure what you have the agent say. And it is ... we see a lot of restaurants that, that talk about some a popular dish or their history or there's certain phrases or sayings that they like. So that can be all included and mimic what your host are saying today when they're answering the phone.
The second is we talked about voices. There's a lot of customization and op- o- options with voices, whether it be accents. Think of the Buttermilk Ranch I keep thinking about a, a Southern accent, versus a New York accent.
sure
So we can tailor that so it fits the brand, and we've talked about even celebrity concepts, we're actually recording the chef or chef owner so that it's their voice.
So that initial kinda five seconds we find incredibly important because the, the caller has to be comfortable and engaged. We see on calls the caller ask. They'll get four minutes into the call, and then they think, "Wait, is this an AI agent? Is this real or not?" And we'll
We plan for that. We can say, "Yes, we're an agent, but we can do ... And here's what we can do for the restaurant." The second thing is being very clear on what we can do for you on the phone call, whether it's take reservations make food ordering, make that all available. And it's these little clues when we train and configure the product early on that, that really make a big difference in how that call goes.
You got my attention because I didn't know this before you mentioned it, but I think I'm hearing that you can add your own owner voice to this or your chef's voice or whoever, a voice that your guests already recognize as being the, the person, the VIP person that greets you and seats you your lead host that they love.
People that are personalities within your restaurant can be the
Yep. Yeah, and it has to f- you know, we want it to fit the brand, and the personality of the restaurant. So even what it says and the words that it uses are really important
Let's talk about Yelp Guest Manager and how that has evolved into this product and how the
Yeah
of work in alignment with each other.
Yes
got existing Guest Manager clients that are now becoming Yelp Host clients,
Yep
where's the overlap and what's the difference?
Yeah. Yeah, and so near and dear to my heart, Yelp Guest Manager is a product that Yelp's now been selling for seven to eight years now. And it's a table management system used to a manage re- tables, availability, the reservations, and an online wait list for restaurants. And so we've got 11,000 restaurants in the US that have been using this product over many years.
This is actually where we first started. When we first launched Yelp Host 10 months ago we wanted to be very focused. So we first went to our existing Yelp Guest Manager customers because we had this really deep integration with the two products. The Host understood what re-reservation availability we had, the restaurant had.
It could book reservations. It could tell you the current wait that was happening at a restaurant. So that's where we first started is integrating those two products and making them work seamlessly together, and that's worked quite well. And so I think the two products together give you one plus one equal, equals three because they're convenient together.
And it's just an extension of where your reservations were already coming in. I think the important part was, again, we're very data-driven, and when we look at data... initially I think a lot of people think, "Oh, the phone's kind of dying or declining in restaurants." We see in our re- in our reservation data that some restaurants are still getting 20, 25% of their total reservations not through, the internet and their website or third-party marketplaces.
They're still getting it through the phone. So the fact of getting these two products to work seamlessly together is incredibly important. And we've talked about revenue increasing. The, the fact that Host answers every phone call, we've seen that the revenues through the phone has actually increased once you turn on Host.
We can compare the reservations you got through your phone pre and Host adding Host on Guest Manager. And because Host is answering every phone call, we're seeing an increase in the number of reservations through the phone that are being added for restaurants
Let's talk about the to-go feature. We didn't necessarily talk about all the third-party platforms out there that are like whacking restaurants, additional charges and commissions on this and that for orders. This is a commission-free product, isn't it?
Yeah. Yep. It's as if we're not working through third parties. We have a direct connection to the POS system. So there are no added fees that Yelp is charging on top of this. This is if
There's a lot of restaurants that, that have built their own food ordering or they use their POS food ordering for the website.
It works the same way, commission-free. And so it's a re- we're really excited about it 'cause it's allowing restaurants to control and minimize some of the costs that they have around this very important kind of channel to-go orders.
We briefly talked about this onboarding process. It sounds pretty seamless. It sounds like it starts with a phone call. Is this a dedicated, some, some platforms call it the guest success manager plat- and
Yeah.
is your person, and
Yep
set it and forget it thing where you really don't need that person once it's up and running and it just keeps going, or you can call
Yeah
three months from now and say, "Hey, what about this?"
How does that work?
Great question. Yeah we call our team the restaurant success team. Again, really trying to have positive outcomes. These are people o- on our team, a lot of them have worked in the restaurant industry, so they know, they know the language that restaurants use, they know the complexity in restaurants.
So it's really important that when you're working with us, you feel comfortable. But yes, as part of the onboarding process you get a dedicated restaurant success person to kinda help walk you through the process. Because like we've been talking about, AI is new and these are ... There's not a lot of best practices out there from a restaurant standpoint.
So we wanna make sure that we can give you as much advice and get you set up correctly so that the phone conversation can be natural, effective, and productive as possible. That all being said, these are not, days or weeks to do. This can be a 30-minute call to get you up and running and make sure that you're just set up correctly.
But it ... We see our best customers not just treat this as a set it and forget it. We make it very easy for you to look at the data, look at the statistics of the calls you're getting, look at the summary of the types of calls you're getting. And as part of this, you wanna ... We want you to be checking in on this once a week, once a month, and we make this easy.
We send you an email. We have a dashboard you can log into. But as you start to look at the types of calls you're getting, maybe you should add some additional data and training data for the host
The quality of those calls. And today we make that really easy to do. I think over time, the AI agent's getting smarter and is learning also as it goes too.
But the main point is we're gonna h- we're gonna treat you well, we're gonna assign you to a, a great person that kinda knows your world, and we're gonna try to make it as quick as possible through that process.
Is there a typical timeline where people... Okay, here's that intimidation thing again we wanna get around. Let's just say I'm an audience, I'm a listener right now. This sounds like right up my alley. We need this. Our phones are ringing off the hook. We're losing revenue, blah, blah, blah. They get in touch with you and we'll talk about the URL in a second, but how soon before they literally get that onboarding call, they're up and running?
Is it one day? Is it... Tell us about that.
Yeah it can be less... It can be in a few hours. So you could call us. It's a pretty easy process to sign up, and we can get you going same day. And a lot of that is what we find is that restaurant b- owners are busy, right? So they've got a half hour, they call in, they get a demo of the product, but maybe they wanna schedule.
They're going into the weekend and maybe they don't wanna turn it on, on Thursday before going into their busy weekend. So we see a lot of people s- get a demo, sign up for it pretty quickly, and then schedule a call at a time that's convenient for them, whether that's Monday or Tuesday. And then we'll get it set up and quickly and turn it on after that
Fantastic. Wow, Cliff. This is an amazing tool. And again, if I was back in the restaurant business, and I owned restaurants for 23 years, I had all the issues that we're talking about, and we had to deal with them the old-school way. And now AI is revolutionizing every part of an operation, behind the scenes, in front of the scenes. And again, it's all about enhancing hospitality, which clearly this does. So thanks for being a great guest on the show.
I love it. These were great questions, so really appreciate it
Audience, if you're interested in Yelp Host, the website to go to is business.yelp.com/rockstars. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks to our sponsors this week, including Yelp Host. We can't wait to see you in the next episode. Stay well, stay tuned, and I will see you then.
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