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Notes on answering the phone properly
Practical writing on missed calls, phone automation and the compliance details nobody warns you about. No thought leadership.
Why restaurant voice AI went mainstream in 2026
OpenTable says restaurant adoption of voice AI grew sixfold in a year. Here's what actually changed, who's driving it, and what it means if you're deciding now.
Read itWhy catering and event enquiries are the calls a kitchen can least afford to miss
A catering or event enquiry is one of the biggest bookings a restaurant takes, and it tends to call in exactly when nobody has a spare minute: mid dinner-service, or after everyone's gone home for the night.
16 August 2026 · 5 min readMulti-site groupsFive venues, five phone lines, five different answers to the same question
Running a multi-site hospitality group means every location answers its phone a little differently, and head office usually has no visibility into which one is losing calls.
11 August 2026 · 6 min readBars & cafésWhy bars and cafés lose their best bookings to background noise
A bar or café's highest-value calls (group bookings, private hire, event enquiries) arrive at exactly the hours it's too loud and too busy to hear the phone ring.
11 August 2026 · 6 min readTakeaway & deliveryYour phone order is commission-free. Most of them ring out anyway.
A phone order costs a restaurant nothing in commission; a delivery-app order costs 15–30% before any other fee. Here's why the free channel is the one that gets dropped.
9 August 2026 · 7 min readHotelsWhat your hotel's front desk misses after 10pm
Overnight is one person covering a lobby, a phone and a door. Here is what slips, and what it costs in direct bookings.
28 July 2026 · 7 min readRestaurantsYour phone rings hardest when nobody can answer it
Peak service and peak call volume are the same hour. What that costs a restaurant, and the options for fixing it.
21 July 2026 · 7 min readOperationsWhat missed calls actually cost your business
Missed calls do not show up on any report, which is exactly why they go unfixed. Here is how to put a number on yours.
14 July 2026 · 6 min readBuying guideAI receptionist vs. IVR vs. answering service
Three different things get sold as 'we answer your phones'. They fail in different ways. Here is how to tell which one you actually need.
7 July 2026 · 8 min readComplianceCall recording consent: what businesses need to get right
If you record or transcribe calls, the legal obligation is yours, not your vendor's. A practical guide to the rules and how to comply.
23 June 2026 · 7 min readHow-toHow to set up an AI receptionist in an afternoon
The setup itself takes minutes. Getting it good takes an afternoon, and most of that is preparation you can do before you sign up for anything.
16 June 2026 · 6 min read