How to set up an AI phone receptionist for your restaurant

The phone rings at 7:40 on a Friday. The host is seating a six-top, a server is running food past the stand, and the call goes to voicemail. Most of the time it was a simple question: do you have a table for two at eight, is the patio open, is there parking nearby. An AI phone receptionist exists to take exactly those calls, so the people in the room can stay with the people in the room.

This guide walks through setting one up for a restaurant with Apollo, from the first chat message to a live number, and is honest about the parts that still need a person.

What an AI host should handle, and what it shouldn't

Before you set anything up, decide what you want off your plate. For most restaurants, the calls that repeat all day fall into a few buckets:

• Reservations. A party size, a date, a time and a name.
• Full slots. Someone wants a time you can't seat, and would take the waitlist.
• Questions. Hours, the menu, dietary options, parking, directions, dress code, corkage.
• Anything else. A complaint, a large private event, a lost jacket. These should reach a person.

Apollo's restaurant pack covers the first three and hands off the fourth. It books new tables, adds guests to the waitlist, and answers from your menu and FAQs. It doesn't change or cancel existing bookings over the phone yet, because it can't verify that the caller is the guest who booked. Those go to your team, and you make the change in the dashboard.

Step 1: Start from the restaurant starter

Sign up, pick the Restaurant starter, and type your restaurant's name. That gives you a working host straight away: a greeting that says it's a virtual assistant and that the call may be recorded, the reservation and waitlist tools, and the safety rules every starter gets, such as never making up prices or availability and never asking for card numbers.

You can also start by describing what you want in plain words, for example: "A host for my Thai restaurant. Book tables, put people on the waitlist when we're full, and answer questions about spice levels and vegan dishes." Apollo builds the agent from that and asks for anything it's missing. There's more on that approach in vibe coding a voice agent.

Step 2: Teach it your availability

A reservation is only useful if the table exists. Apollo keeps its own reservation book and checks it on every call, so it needs four things from you:

1. 1Opening hours for each day of the week. A day with no hours is treated as closed.
2. 2Tables per slot: how many reservations you'll take in one time slot.
3. 3Largest party a single table can seat.
4. 4Slot length: how long a booking holds a table, in minutes.

On a call, the agent always checks availability before it books. It only offers times inside your opening hours; if a guest asks for a time when you're closed, it tells them the hours instead. If the slot is full, it offers the nearby times that are free, and if none work, the waitlist. Once it has a name, it books and reads the date, time and party size back to the guest.

Apollo doesn't sync with outside reservation platforms. Those only offer partner APIs, so Apollo's book is the source of truth. If you need bookings somewhere else, a webhook can send each new or cancelled booking to your own systems.

Step 3: Give it your menu and your answers

Guests ask about food more than anything. Paste your menu in, or upload a photo, a PDF or a spreadsheet export, and Apollo turns it into categories and items for you to review before you save. The agent answers from what you saved and won't invent a dish or a price.

Allergies get special care. The agent will share what your menu says about a dish, but it never guarantees that something is free of an allergen; it tells the guest to confirm with staff when they arrive. That rule is built into the restaurant starter.

Then add the questions you hear every week as FAQs. A good first list:

• Parking and the nearest transit stop
• Patio, high chairs, wheelchair access
• Dress code, corkage, cake fees
• Large parties and private dining: who to talk to
• Happy hour and specials

Anything that changes often, such as a weekly specials list, works better in a data table the agent reads during the call. Update a row and the next caller hears the new answer, without touching the prompt.

Step 4: Decide when a person takes over

Add a transfer number, usually the host stand or a manager's phone. When a guest asks for a person, or wants something the agent can't do, the live call goes there. Without a transfer number, it points callers to your restaurant's main number instead.

If your guests often call in another language, set the agent's language. Apollo agents speak English or one of 14 others, including Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Tagalog, with one language per agent.

Step 5: Test it like a busy Friday

Before the agent takes a real call, call it yourself in the browser. Try the easy booking, then the awkward ones:

• A party bigger than your largest table
• A time ten minutes after you close
• A guest who wants the waitlist, then changes their mind
• "Does the pad thai have peanuts?"
• "Can I speak to the manager?"

Then run the readiness tests. An AI caller rings the agent with the hard cases, such as insisting on a person or trying to pull it off topic, and grades each conversation. Add your own scenarios too (up to 20 per agent). A scenario only passes if all 3 of its runs do, so a lucky pass doesn't count. Browser test calls are free and don't use minutes. The full checklist is in how to test a voice agent before it takes real calls.

Step 6: Put it on your phone line

When you're happy, pick a plan and get a number in your area code. Guests don't need to learn a new number, though: you can forward the line they already call. Many restaurants start by forwarding only when the line is busy or nobody answers, so the host stand still picks up when it can and the agent catches the overflow. Here's how forwarding works, carrier by carrier.

What you'll see after service

Every call lands in the call log with its recording, a transcript and a short summary. Bookings appear in Reservations, full slots in Waitlist, where you mark guests seated or cancelled. If you want to know what guests ask most, read a week of transcripts: they're the fastest way to find the FAQ you forgot to write.

What it costs

Building and testing are free. Plans start when the agent answers a real phone number, and include a set of minutes each month, billed by the second after that. What an AI phone agent costs does the math, and pricing has every plan side by side.

A short checklist

1. 1Pick the Restaurant starter and type your name.
2. 2Set opening hours, tables per slot, largest party and slot length.
3. 3Import the menu and add your top FAQs.
4. 4Add a transfer number.
5. 5Call it in the browser, then run the readiness tests.
6. 6Get a number or forward your line, starting with busy and no-answer.

Ready to try it? Start building free, or read more on the restaurant use case and the FAQ.