Should Your Café Use an AI Phone System? Here’s What to Know

Australian restaurants miss 77 million phone calls a year. At peak hours (midday and 7pm), about half of all calls go unanswered. That’s a lot of lost bookings, frustrated regulars, and revenue walking out the door before anyone picks up.

A Melbourne startup called Hey Buddy thinks it has the fix: an AI phone concierge that answers calls in real time, handles FAQs and booking changes, and escalates anything complicated to a human. It’s already live at more than 1,000 hospitality venues around the country.

But before you sign up for any AI phone system, there’s a fair bit to think through.

The problem is real

If you’ve worked a Friday dinner service, you already know this. The phone rings while you’re in the weeds, nobody grabs it, and by the time someone does the caller has hung up. About one in three restaurant calls goes unanswered. At peak times that climbs to one in two.

Around 50% of those calls are booking modifications and cancellations. Not complex conversations, just time-consuming ones that take a staff member off the floor to handle.

The phone has been the last part of hospitality that hasn’t changed much. Still basically the same process as it was 30 years ago.

What AI phone systems actually do

Tools like Hey Buddy work by pulling from a pre-built knowledge base of your venue’s information: opening hours, menus, parking, pet policies, what’s on tap. When a caller asks something standard, the system answers it. When it can’t, it flags the question internally and passes the call to staff.

Reservations can be taken and modified. Customers get a text confirmation. Errant details like misspelled names or wrong dates can be corrected.

What AI phone systems don’t do well: handle an upset customer, a noisy call, or a VIP demanding a table right now. Those still need a person. The better systems know when to hand off, rather than grinding through a frustrated caller.

Hey Buddy was built by Stevan Premutico, who previously founded Dimmi (now TheFork) in 2009 and the tap-to-pay app me&u in 2018. The system runs on five AI platforms (he hasn’t said which ones) and was trained specifically on Australian slang and how Australians pronounce words. Investors include chef Shannon Bennett and Google Australia managing director Mel Silva. It was built with hospitality operator Australian Venue Co.

What to check before you commit

The quality of any AI phone system depends entirely on the quality of the knowledge base it draws from. If your hours change seasonally, your menu rotates, or you run regular specials, someone has to keep that information current. A system answering calls with outdated info is worse than no system at all.

Ask specifically how escalation works. What triggers a handoff to a human? How does that happen mid-call? Is there a fallback if no staff are available? A system that drops calls it can’t handle isn’t a solution.

Think about your regulars. Frequent callers who ring because they want to talk to someone, not just get information, may find AI answering jarring. That’s a real consideration for venues where the personal relationship is part of the offering.

Know what happens when it goes wrong. Retail consultant Trent Rigby put it plainly in The Age: “It only takes one thing, one customer interaction of hundreds of thousands for it to go wrong, and it to become public. Once that trust goes, it’s really, really hard to get back.” AI isn’t fail-proof.

Run the numbers on cost. Hey Buddy is $399/month for smaller venues, up to $800/month for larger chains. That’s not trivial on hospitality margins. Work out how many missed calls you’re losing revenue on before deciding whether the cost is justified.

Is it worth it?

That depends on your venue. For a busy café or restaurant taking 50+ calls a day during peak service, the maths can work. Staff aren’t being pulled from tables to answer “are you open Sunday?” and every call gets answered.

For a smaller or more relationship-driven venue, it’s a closer call. The technology is still early, Premutico himself says that, and voice AI handles routine queries well but not edge cases with the grace of an experienced front-of-house team.

Run the numbers on your actual missed call rate, think about the implications for your regular customers, and trial it on a limited basis before committing to a monthly fee if you can.

AI answering the phone isn’t inherently bad for hospitality. It might be exactly what a stretched team needs. But signing up because it sounds like a good idea, without understanding how it works or what could go wrong, is how you end up with one bad interaction on social media that takes months to recover from.

Sources

• The Age, “Hi, how may AI help you?”, June 7, 2026
• Roy Morgan: 10.5 million Australians use ChatGPT (2026)
• CreditorWatch: food and beverage businesses have the highest business collapse rates in Australia

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