The best AI receptionist for restaurants
A restaurant phone rings hardest during service, when the floor is full and nobody can get to it. The booking rings out, the table stays empty, and the covers are simply lost.
The honest starting point
For a restaurant the phone competes directly with the room. During service the team is on the floor, so a call about a table for Friday goes unanswered at exactly the moment it is most valuable. The routine is straightforward — take a booking, change a booking, quote opening times, answer whether you do Sunday lunch — but it lands in the middle of a rush, and every call the front of house stops to take is a table left waiting.
Two things separate the options. The first is bookings: does it take covers reliably, handle a large group or a change, and put them into the system your floor actually works from? The second is the safety line — allergens and dietary questions must never be answered off the cuff by an automated line; they have to go to a person. Judge each option below on whether it clears the routine reservation traffic during service, and whether it knows to hand an allergen question to the kitchen rather than guess.
The comparison
| Type | Published price | For a restaurant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ringmere | AI, UK-built | £49 / £99 / £249 + VAT | Books into a connected calendar with a UK number. Fine for a single site if you will set up the covers and time slots. |
| Hey Jodie | AI, self-serve | £49 / £99 / £199, unlimited minutes | Unlimited minutes suit a phone that rings all through service. You write the scripts and connect the diary. |
| Goodcall | AI, self-serve | $79 / $129 / $249 per month | Built for appointment and booking businesses, but priced in dollars — check UK number handling before committing. |
| My AI Front Desk | AI bundle, US | $99/month, 200 minutes + chat, SMS, CRM | SMS confirmations are useful for reducing walk-away bookings. Dollar billing; verify UK numbers. |
| AnswerConnect | Human, 24/7, never AI | £205–£395/month, then £1.75/min | A human voice with published rates. Usually more than a single restaurant’s call pattern needs. |
| Swift Solution | Managed AI plan | £497 / £897 + setup | Covers taken and changed during service, allergen questions routed to a person, plus website and follow-up. Built and run for you. |
Competitor figures read from the supplier’s own published pricing page, September 2026. Where none is published we say so. Prices change — check theirs before deciding.
So which should you pick?
For a single restaurant whose only problem is a phone nobody can reach during service, a self-serve AI at £49 to £99 a month is the obvious fix and pays for itself on the covers it saves in a fortnight. The care is needed in two places: making sure bookings land in the system your floor actually works from rather than a separate calendar nobody checks, and drawing the allergen line clearly so the automated line never answers a dietary question itself. Both are configuration, and both are where a managed setup earns its fee — a cheap tool that takes bookings into the wrong place, or answers an allergen question wrongly, creates more work than it saves.
One plan, everything included
Website, AI, automation and ongoing management in a single monthly fee. No contracts — 30 days' notice.
- ✓3–5 page professional website
- ✓AI chatbot trained on your business
- ✓Lead capture + instant alerts
- ✓Automated enquiry follow-up
- ✓Missed call text-back
- ✓Online booking & monthly reporting
- ✓Everything in Starter
- ✓5–8 page website with live chat
- ✓AI voice receptionist — 200 mins/mo
- ✓Full lead & sales pipeline
- ✓Client onboarding automation
- ✓Invoice chasing & weekly reporting
- ✓Everything in Growth
- ✓Unlimited page website
- ✓AI voice receptionist — 400 mins/mo
- ✓Staff onboarding automation
- ✓Social scheduling & knowledge base
- ✓Priority support & strategy calls
All plans include hosting, edits, updates and ongoing management. Cancel any time with 30 days' notice. Full pricing details →