What does it cost to have staff answer restaurant phones? A 2026 comparison with AI

A person who answers your restaurant's phone costs their hourly wage plus the employer's payroll taxes for every hour you schedule them, busy or quiet. In the made-up example below, 42 hours a week at $16 an hour, with the 2 hours over 40 paid as overtime, comes to about $38,955 a year. Maple's AI answering plans cost $1,020 to $4,200 a year, and staff still take the calls it transfers.

This page works out the staff side line by line, so you can put your own wage and hours in. For the share of sales your whole team costs, use our labor cost percentage guide.

What does an hour of phone cover cost?

Start with the wage you would pay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey puts the median usual weekly earnings of full-time hosts and hostesses (restaurant, lounge and coffee shop) at $605 in 2025 and $609 in 2024, as published on FRED as series LEU0254547200A. Over a 40-hour week, $605 works out to about $15.13 an hour. The survey counts tips usually received, so the part a restaurant pays can be lower where hosts share tips.

On top of the wage, the employer pays its own share of payroll taxes and insurance:

Cost line	Rate	Source
Social Security, employer share	6.2% of wages, up to $184,500 of 2026 wages	IRS Topic 751
Medicare, employer share	1.45% of all wages	IRS Topic 751
Federal unemployment (FUTA)	6.0% of the first $7,000 per employee, or 0.6% after the full state credit, which is $42 a year	IRS Topic 759
State unemployment and workers' compensation	Set by your state and your insurer	Your state rate notice and your policy
Benefits, paid leave, training and hiring	Your own policies	Your payroll records

The first two lines add up to 7.65% of wages. Hiring and training come back each time someone leaves, so check how often your front-of-house jobs turn over with our restaurant turnover guide.

How many hours of phone cover do you need?

Calls come in bursts, and a shift is paid by the hour. A person scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. is paid for all three hours even if most calls land between 11:45 and 12:30. Count your calls by 15-minute block with our call volume worksheet before you decide on hours. Our rush-hour coverage guide shows how many people a peak block needs.

The example below uses two made-up schedules for one restaurant open six days a week:

• Lunch and dinner: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., which is 7 hours a day and 42 hours a week.
• Dinner only: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., which is 4 hours a day and 24 hours a week.

What does the worked example add up to?

Assumptions, all made up for the example: one person works every scheduled hour at $16.00 an hour, 52 weeks a year, with no benefits and $400 a year for state unemployment tax and workers' compensation. Replace each one with your own figure. Federal law requires overtime pay of at least time and a half for hours over 40 in a workweek, according to the Department of Labor's overtime page, so the 42-hour schedule pays 2 hours a week at $24.00. Some states add their own rules, and splitting the hours between two people avoids overtime but adds a second set of per-person costs.

Line	Lunch and dinner, 42 hours a week	Dinner only, 24 hours a week
Wages a week	$688.00 (40 × $16.00 + 2 × $24.00)	$384.00 (24 × $16.00)
Wages a year (× 52)	$35,776.00	$19,968.00
Social Security and Medicare, 7.65%	$2,736.86	$1,527.55
Federal unemployment, 0.6% of $7,000	$42.00 (the cap)	$42.00 (the same cap)
State unemployment and workers' compensation	$400.00 (made up)	$400.00 (same made-up figure)
Total a year	$38,954.86	$21,937.55
Total a month (÷ 12)	$3,246.24	$1,828.13
Cost per scheduled hour	$17.84	$17.58

The lunch-and-dinner hour costs more because 2 of its hours each week are paid at $24.00, even though its share of the fixed $442 of unemployment tax and insurance is smaller. Add benefits, paid leave and the manager's time to hire and train, and both totals rise.

What does AI answering cost?

Maple lists its prices on its pricing page, with no per-minute fees:

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	What it covers
Maple Voice	$150 a month ($1,800 a year)	$85 a month ($1,020 a year)	24/7 answering, hours and FAQ answers, automated call transfer, call analytics, multilingual voice
Maple Pro	$350 a month ($4,200 a year)	$220 a month ($2,640 a year)	Everything in Voice, plus phone orders into your POS, reservations, payment over the phone and order confirmation texts

The two sides do different amounts of work. A person can also bag orders, seat guests and fix a problem at the counter. Voice answers questions and transfers calls; it does not take orders. Pro takes orders into supported POS systems, listed on the integrations page. Compare the plan with the calls you actually get.

What will staff still do after AI answers?

Some calls need a person. In Maple's restaurant phone audit, 13.6% of calls at restaurants that take phone orders asked for a person. That figure is a request label from keyword matching on AI-written call summaries, in a group of paying Maple restaurants, so use it only as a prompt to count your own.

• Transferred calls: someone has to answer the handoff line. Our handoff checklist covers who owns which request.
• Changes to orders already placed, refunds and complaints: these need a person who can see the order.
• Catering and large orders: a manager may need to quote these. See our catering inquiry guide.
• Menu and hours upkeep: someone keeps the POS menu, prices and holiday hours right, because the phone agent answers from them.

Budget a few staff minutes a day for these, even with AI answering.

What if staff answer between other tasks?

If you have no phone person, whoever is nearest picks up, and the cost is their time. In the call volume guide's made-up week, staff answered 318 calls. At 2 minutes a call (also made up), that is 636 minutes, or 10.6 hours a week, worth $169.60 in wages at $16.00 an hour before taxes.

You pay for those hours either way. Ask what else that person would have done in them, and how many calls rang out while they were busy. Line 7 of the call volume worksheet gives you the second number.

How do you compare the options fairly?

1. Price the same period for each option: a year, with the same billing term for any service.
2. Cost staff by scheduled hours, including quiet ones.
3. List the calls each option leaves for staff, and cost that time too.
4. Count missed calls before and after any change, in weeks at a similar time of year.
5. Test an AI service on your own menu before you change anyone's schedule. The product page lists the test calls to place first.

Published by Maple, which sells AI phone answering for restaurants. This AI-assisted guide combines BLS earnings data from FRED, IRS payroll tax pages, Maple's published prices and phone audit, and an original worked example on made-up inputs. It does not promise a saving or report any restaurant's costs.