AI receptionist for restaurants — who should I use?

Start with Maple Pro if you need phone orders through a supported POS or OpenTable reservations. Maple prints its prices (Voice $150 a month, Pro $350, or $85 and $220 billed yearly) and charges no per-minute fee, so a busy Friday costs what a slow Tuesday costs. Include Hostie when you also want guest calls, texts, email, Instagram and Google Maps messages in one place. Keep staff responsible for walk-ins and exceptions. Choose by the task your restaurant needs finished, then test that task.

A menu answer, a booking link and a confirmed reservation are different results. A voice demo can help you judge the conversation, but it does not prove that the right booking or kitchen ticket reaches your system. The comparison below describes published scope; the worksheet is a proposed test, not a report of hands-on product testing.

What does an AI receptionist do for a restaurant?

It answers the phone on your existing number, says what the guest asked for back to them, and finishes the job it is allowed to finish: an answer, a transfer to your staff, a pickup order in your POS or a table in your reservation book. Everything past that is a staff job. A good receptionist plan is the one whose finished jobs match the calls you actually get, so count those first.

Four jobs cover almost every restaurant call. Write down how many of each you get in a normal week, and which ones are missed after you close:

• Questions: hours, parking, allergens, whether you take walk-ins. No system has to change.
• Transfers: a manager, a catering request, a complaint. A person has to pick up.
• Orders: items, modifiers, a pickup time and a payment, written into the POS so the kitchen sees a ticket.
• Reservations: a date, a party size, a name, written into a booking system without a duplicate.

Maple's plans split along that line. Voice covers the first two. Pro adds the last two. If most of your missed calls are questions and transfers, Voice is enough. If guests call to order or book, you need Pro.

Which receptionist plan fits the job?

Option	Published scope	Start here if
Maple	Voice covers answering, hours, FAQs and call transfer. Pro adds phone ordering, supported POS integrations and reservations.	You want phone answering or orders and reservations, with the plan chosen for that task.
Hostie	Essential sends links for menus, reservations and takeout. Premium adds reservation integrations and takeout ordering by phone or text.	You want guest communication together with direct booking or ordering; confirm the plan and connection.
Loman	Starter covers inquiries and transfers. Premium adds ordering, phone reservations, POS integration and phone payment.	You want to assess those tasks against your menu and systems, with a written quote.
Staff host	Your team sets the role, hours and decision rights.	You need someone to greet and seat walk-ins or handle requests outside the software's agreed scope.

Compare the full plan details at Maple, Hostie and Loman. Ask each vendor to confirm the exact location, plan and connection before treating a listed feature as ready for your restaurant.

Does the request reach the booking or ordering system?

Maple Pro includes supported POS ordering and OpenTable reservations. Use the call-to-kitchen trial checklist to check an order, then review the OpenTable setup and reservation checks separately. Confirm booking settings, changes, cancellations and staff handoff for your location. A reservation connection does not establish every waitlist, deposit or special-request workflow.

Hostie's integration page describes booking, modifying and cancelling OpenTable reservations by phone or text. It also describes Olo sending orders into the POS, Square pickup orders, and Stream routing orders into the POS. Hostie therefore belongs in an ordering or reservation comparison too. Confirm which route your proposed plan uses and inspect its actual result.

For messages, Hostie's homepage lists calls, texts and email together with Instagram and Google Maps texting. Ask which channels your plan includes, who can reply, and how staff find an unresolved request. A conversation in an inbox still needs someone to check whether the guest's request is complete.

How does Maple handle a reservation call, step by step?

Maple's setup docs describe four steps on every booking call. The voice agent checks availability for the date, time and party size. It offers the open slots, including any experience-based option such as a prix fixe or brunch. It holds the slot while it confirms the guest's name, phone number, party size and special requests. Then it creates the reservation and the guest gets a confirmation.

The same flow handles a change, a cancellation and a lookup. The agent can find an existing booking by confirmation number or by the phone number used to book, so a guest who calls back to move a table does not need to repeat the whole booking.

Two routes exist in the docs, and you should ask Maple which one applies to your location:

Route	What the docs say	Start here if
OpenTable	You need an active OpenTable listing, your OpenTable Restaurant ID and a Maple Pro plan. Availability, experience-based options, cancellation policies and dining-area preferences come from OpenTable. Bookings show in OpenTable and in the Maple dashboard, each linked to the call that made it. Tables are set in OpenTable. Set blackout dates in Maple, which the phone agent follows, and block the same dates in OpenTable, since OpenTable-managed locations need both.	OpenTable already runs your book and your host stand reads it.
Maple bookings	You set your own seating areas, tables, reservation hours, turn times, booking rules and closed dates in Settings, then a manager chooses Turn on bookings. Maple texts guests a confirmation and a reminder. The docs say Maple does not collect cards or fees yet.	You have no reservation system, or you want the book and the phone in one place. Ask Maple to confirm availability for your location.

The docs list Resy as coming soon, with no date. Only the Resy connection is missing: Maple cannot write into a Resy book yet. Maple's own bookings are separate from OpenTable and Resy, and the docs say a location can switch to them, so ask Maple whether to move your book to Maple bookings. Maple's pages and setup docs describe the two routes differently, and the more specific source here is the docs, so confirm with the team which route your location gets.

What happens when a call needs a person?

This is where an AI receptionist earns or loses a manager's trust, so test it before you go live. Maple's docs describe two handoff styles. With Ring Staff First, your own line rings first and the agent takes over if nobody answers. You can set it up in Maple, where Maple rings your Transfer to Staff number for about 30 seconds, or with your carrier's no-answer forwarding to your Maple number, where the carrier and phone control how many rings come first. With Transfer to Staff, the agent calls your handoff number from your Maple number.

• Maple rings the handoff number for up to 30 seconds on each attempt. If nobody answers in that time, the caller comes back to the agent instead of dropping.
• If the handoff line goes to voicemail first (the docs say that can happen after about 20 seconds, set by the carrier), the caller can hear "the restaurant is busy". Lengthen your carrier's voicemail trigger and make sure a person answers that line.
• When a transfer goes unanswered, Maple sends staff a text. It uses your SMS number if you set one, and your handoff number if not. It checks the line type first and does not text a landline.
• Your carrier's call history shows the Maple number, not the guest's number, because Maple cannot pass on the original caller ID. Phone extensions are not supported.

Setting up the forwarding itself is covered in the call-forwarding checklist. Maple answers on your existing number through call forwarding to a Maple number; it is not a phone provider and does not sell a phone line.

Can an AI receptionist handle other languages and hard menu words?

Yes, with limits you should know before you promise it to guests. Maple's docs list Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French and Korean as available in beta, with Cantonese by request, and English always on. The docs also warn that recognition and response quality get worse past about two languages, and that you can write the welcome message in any language Maple supports. The advice there is one main language plus at most one other.

For menu words the speech engine gets wrong, such as focaccia, pho or açaí bowl, Maple has a Difficult Words list kept per store. You add the word after you hear it missed on a call transcript, and the fix applies on the next call. Add words from real calls rather than guessing: ten minutes with last week's transcripts will find most of them.

What should the quote include?

Maple Voice costs $150 per month with monthly billing or $85 per month with annual billing. Maple Pro costs $350 per month with monthly billing or $220 per month with annual billing. These are standard prices before discounts. The annual figures are monthly rates billed annually, not the price for a whole year. Maple prints unlimited minutes and no per-minute fee on its plans.

Hostie and Loman describe their plans without a dollar subscription price on the pricing pages linked above. Request a quote for the same location count and tasks. Check setup, billing term, usage, payment processing, third-party subscriptions and support together.

Bitebuddy lists $0–$1.50 per order and says a digital order fee can offset the cost. That is not proof of zero cost for every restaurant or guest. Ask what counts as a billable order, who pays the fee, how refunds affect it, and what prepaid terms apply before comparing it with a flat monthly plan.

How do the prices compare over a year?

Here is the arithmetic from the printed Maple prices, so you can drop in your own numbers. Twelve months of each plan:

Plan	Monthly billing, 12 months	Annual billing, 12 months	Start here if
Maple Voice	$150 × 12 = $1,800	$85 × 12 = $1,020	Your missed calls are questions and transfers.
Maple Pro	$350 × 12 = $4,200	$220 × 12 = $2,640	Guests call to order or book.

A flat plan against a per-order meter is a break-even question. Take the top of Bitebuddy's printed range, $1.50 an order. Maple Pro at $350 a month costs the same as 234 orders ($350 ÷ $1.50 = 233.3, rounded up). At the $220 annual rate it is 147 orders ($220 ÷ $1.50 = 146.7). Above those counts a flat month costs less than a $1.50 meter; below them the meter costs less. Count your own phone orders for a normal month before you decide, and remember the two products do different jobs, so compare what each one finishes, not only the price.

A blank acceptance worksheet for your trial

Agree on the test records and a quiet test period with the vendor and your team. For each row, write the actual result, pass or fail, and the staff owner. Leave those fields blank until you check the result in the relevant system.

Try this request	Check the result	Assign before launch
Hours or a menu question	The answer matches approved information; uncertainty leads to the agreed fallback.	Who updates the answer and handles an uncertain request?
Create, change or cancel a reservation	The booking system shows the intended state, without a duplicate.	Who handles unavailable slots or a booking the agent cannot find?
A pickup order with a required choice	The POS and kitchen receive the right items and modifiers. Check payment status separately.	Who handles a missing ticket or unsupported change?
A guest message on an included channel	The request reaches the correct location and staff can find its status.	Who replies and marks it resolved?
An after-hours call or unanswered transfer	The call follows the agreed rules and staff can identify any unresolved request.	Who checks it next, and when?

Count attempts, checked completions, transfers and unresolved requests separately. A call that ends without a transfer is not necessarily a completed request. Use your own after-hours call counts to decide when coverage matters.

How do you run the trial week?

1. Before the first test call, write down your last two weeks of phone work by type: questions, transfers, orders, reservations, after-hours. Those counts are your baseline.
2. Clean the source data. For orders, that is the POS menu: item names a guest would say, current prices and real modifiers. For reservations, it is your tables, hours and blackout dates in OpenTable or in Maple's booking settings.
3. Make the test calls yourself, one per row of the worksheet, from a plain request to a hard one: a change halfway through an order, a party size over your largest table, a call at a time you are closed.
4. Check each result in the system, not on the call. The ticket in the POS, the booking in the book, the text on the staff phone.
5. Run one real shift with transfers pointed at a person who knows the test is on. Record transfers answered, transfers missed and what the caller heard.
6. Decide with your counts, not your impression of the voice.

What goes wrong, and how do you fix it?

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
No availability shows for a booking	OpenTable Restaurant ID is wrong, or the connection is new. Maple's docs say the first sync can take a few minutes.	Check the Restaurant ID in the connection, wait a few minutes after connecting, then test again.
A guest could not finish a reservation	The slot was not held at the moment of booking. The docs say Maple tells the caller and can pass them to your staff.	Make sure a person answers the handoff line, and call the guest back if the transfer missed.
A booking is missing in OpenTable	The Maple-OpenTable connection is not active.	Confirm the connection is active in the dashboard; contact Maple support if it persists.
Callers hear "the restaurant is busy" on a transfer	The handoff line went to voicemail before anyone answered.	Lengthen the carrier's voicemail trigger and make sure a person answers that line.
Staff never learn about a missed transfer	No SMS number is set, or the fallback handoff number is a landline.	Set an SMS number that is a mobile phone in the dashboard.
A dish name is heard wrong again and again	The speech engine does not know the word.	Add it to the store's Difficult Words list from the call transcript.
A guest books on a night you want walk-ins only	No blackout is set.	Add the date as a blackout date in Maple, and in OpenTable too if OpenTable manages your book.

What should staff keep doing?

Assign walk-in greeting, seating and exceptions to people with clear authority. Measure the phone work that actually leaves their shift before changing staffing. Agree on who handles complaints, special requests and failed handoffs. Use the call-forwarding checklist to plan routing tests and the return to your prior setup if the trial needs to stop.

Maple's blackout rules show the split well: the phone agent will not book inside a blackout, but walk-ins and the waitlist are not affected, so a person can still seat guests who arrive. Decide the same way for every rule you set. The software holds the line you drew; staff handle the guest in front of them.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a new phone number or phone system? No. Maple answers on your existing number through call forwarding to a Maple number, and it works with landline, cable, mobile and business VoIP. It does not sell a phone line.

Is the cheaper Voice plan enough? Only if your calls are questions and transfers. Voice covers answering, hours, FAQs and call transfer. Phone ordering and reservations are in Pro.

Can the receptionist take a card number for a reservation? On Maple's own bookings, the docs say Maple does not collect cards or fees yet. If you need deposits, ask which system holds them; a reservation connection does not by itself establish a deposit workflow.

Can it book on Resy? Maple's docs list Resy as coming soon, with no date. OpenTable is the reservation provider Maple connects to today, and Maple also has its own bookings.

What if a guest wants a person? The agent can pass the call to your handoff number. Test that handoff on a real shift, because the answer depends on your carrier and who picks up.

Is it cheaper than a staff host? That depends on your wage, your shift length and how many calls you get; this page does not give a wage figure. Use the worksheet counts and the annual totals above, and price the host hours the phone takes from the floor.

Published by Maple. This AI-assisted guide combines linked vendor plan details with Maple's setup docs and an original trial worksheet; vendor pages and Maple docs were read November 11, 2026. It does not report a product test or promise a staffing or sales result.