Bars & cafés
An AI receptionist for bars and cafés
A café at eight in the morning and a bar at nine at night have the same problem: it is far too loud to hear a phone, and the person who would answer it has a queue in front of them.
A typical call
Where the calls go missing
Nobody hears the phone
Between the grinder, the music and the room, a ringing handset is genuinely inaudible at exactly the hours you are busiest.
Group and event enquiries slip away
A booking for twelve, a birthday, a Christmas party: these are the highest-value calls you take and the easiest to miss.
Opening hours change and callers do not know
Bank holidays, private hire, seasonal hours. Every change generates a wave of calls asking the same thing.
What Hilda handles
- Taking group bookings and capturing the detail an event needs: numbers, date, occasion, budget
- Answering hours, location, dog policy, food service times and whether you take walk-ins
- Routing private hire and event enquiries straight to whoever owns them
- Handling the surge of calls that follows every change in opening hours
- Taking collection orders into your POS during table service
What it deliberately does not do
Knowing where a system stops matters more than knowing where it starts.
- It does not agree pricing for a private hire or event; it captures the brief and books a call.
- It does not serve licensing or age-verification decisions; those stay with your staff.
Further reading
Why bars and cafés lose their best bookings to background noise
Common questions
- Can an AI receptionist take group bookings for a bar or café?
- Yes; Hilda takes group bookings and captures the detail an event needs: numbers, date, occasion and budget, then routes private hire and event enquiries to whoever owns them.
- Will it quote a price for a private event?
- No; Hilda does not agree pricing for a private hire or event. It captures the brief and books a call instead.
- Can it take collection orders during table service?
- Yes; Hilda takes collection orders into your POS while table service is running, on top of answering hours, dog policy and food service times.
- How much does an AI receptionist cost?
- Hilda AI is $199 a month per location, with 500 minutes included and $0.25 per additional minute. There's no setup fee, and you can cancel anytime.
Hear it on your own calls
We will set Hilda up with your details and call it together, so you hear exactly what your callers would hear.