How to Build a Custom AI Phone Bot for Your Restaurant: Automate Bookings, Orders, and Customer Service

Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash

Are you in the restaurant business? Your staff juggles tables, orders, and customer service. Did you know you can automate your phone line with an AI that greets callers, takes reservations, handles orders, and answers common questions?

Why Your Restaurant Needs an AI Phone Bot

• When your customers are calling to reserve a table or place an order, they won’t wait if no one answers.
• During peak hours, your phone interruptions hurt service flow.
• You can talk to customers anytime — even after closing.

What Your AI Phone Bot Can Do

1. You can take table reservations.
2. You can greet every caller.
3. You can forward customer calls to staff.
4. Your POS or booking system become automated

What You’ll Need to Build It

1. Twilio voice API to handle phone calls
2. OpenAI GPT-4 for natural language understanding and generation
3. Flask/FastAPI (Python) for backend logic and routing
4. Google Calendar / Notion / Booking App for managing reservations
5. Zapier or Make for integrations

Set Up a Twilio Phone Number

• Create an account.
• Buy a virtual phone number (choose one with voice capabilities).
• Set up a “Voice Webhook” — this” URL will handle the call flow.

Connect to GPT-4 for Smart Conversation

Twilio’s TwiML or TwiML Bins will stream the call audio to your backend system, and GPT-4 handles the conversation logic.

Example flow:

• The caller says, “I want a table for 2 at 7 pm tonight.”
• Audio is transcribed by Twilio’s Speech Recognition.
• Transcription is sent to GPT-4 with a prompt like

prompt = f"""
Customer said: "{customer_input}"

You are a friendly restaurant assistant. Extract:
1. Reservation time
2. Number of guests
3. Name (if provided)
4. Any special requests
"""

• GPT-4 returns structured data
• You store it and reply with a response like: “Great! I’ve booked a table for 2 at 7 PM. Can I get your name, please?”

Handle Reservations or Orders

• Log the reservation in Google Sheets, Notion, or Airtable
• Connect to your POS (Square, Toast, Lightspeed) via their APIs
• Send SMS confirmations using Twilio’s messaging service

def log_reservation(name, guests, time):
    sheet.append_row([name, guests, time, "Phone Bot"])

Forward to Staff When Needed

Not everything can be automated. You can configure the bot to:

• Forward complex calls (e.g., complaints or large group bookings) to the manager
• Offer a menu like: “Say ‘talk to a person’ at any time to speak with staff.”

Add Natural Language FAQs

You can preload GPT-4 with your restaurant info so it can answer things like:

• “What are your opening hours?”
• “Do you offer vegan dishes?”
• “Where’s parking?”

Real-World Use Cases

• Busy city restaurants that get hundreds of daily calls
• Ghost kitchens or takeout-only brands
• Family-owned spots that can’t always staff the phones
• Franchises looking to unify their communication style

Finally, no system builds quickly, this AI system also takes time to set up. But once it’s running, it’s like hiring a polite, well-trained assistant who never takes a break.