Nobody picks up a phone at half past seven on a Friday
Your host is seating a four-top and your phone has rung eleven times. GreetKeeper answers every one of them, takes the booking, and reads your allergen policy.
Caller
“Are you doing food until ten? We're six of us and one of the group is coeliac. Can you fit us in tonight?”
What happened next
- Confirmed the kitchen closes at 9:45pm, last orders stated
- Booked six covers at 8:15pm on the back banquette
- Read out the coeliac policy and flagged the booking for the kitchen
Service is exactly when the phone is loudest and the host is busiest
Between seven and nine your host is running the floor. The phone rings through all of it, and every call you don't answer is a table that goes somewhere else.
Most of those calls are short and repetitive. Are you open Sunday, have you got parking, is there a set menu, can you do a high chair. A host who answers them spends your shift on the phone instead of on the door.
The bookings hiding inside that noise are your problem. A six-cover walk-up inquiry at half seven is a real table on a Friday, and it rings exactly like the eleventh parking question until somebody picks up.
GreetKeeper answers all of them. Hours, parking and set-menu questions get your answer, and a reservation gets taken against the covers you actually have.
Covers, time and the allergen question
Three things decide a reservation for you, and the fourth is the one that reaches your kitchen.
Covers and the time they want
Party size and the slot, checked against what you've got left. A six-top at eight on a Friday either exists or it doesn't, and your caller hears which rather than a promise to call back.
Read the allergen policy exactly
Your own wording about coeliac, nut and dairy handling, read exactly as you wrote it. It never improvises about what your kitchen can do, and the booking carries the flag through to your pass.
Answer the repetitive questions properly
Kitchen close, last orders, parking, the set menu, whether dogs are allowed on your terrace. All fixed facts, all supplied by you, all answered without a host walking off your floor.
Take large parties to a person
Anything over the size you set, plus private hire and events, goes to your manager with the details rather than getting booked automatically.
Reservation systems, honestly
Yours is the one vertical with a serious specialist competitor, so the connection picture deserves a straight answer.
| Tool | How it connects | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Google Calendar | Writes directly | Direct write, which works for a small room run on a calendar. |
| Outlook Calendar | Writes directly | Direct write, same behavior. |
| OpenTable | Not yet | No verified write path. The booking is captured and your host enters it. |
| Resy | Not yet | Not verified. |
| SevenRooms | Not yet | Not verified. |
| Toast | Not yet | Not verified. |
Against the tables that rang out
Count the calls you didn't answer on one Friday service and the arithmetic does itself.
| Plan | Monthly | Calls included | After that |
|---|---|---|---|
| StarterFor a single location taking calls one line at a time. | $49 | 200 | $0.45 per call |
| ProfessionalBooking, routing and transfers included, not an add-on. | $149 | 750 | $0.35 per call |
| ScaleFor busy phones and longer opening hours. | $349 | 2,000 | $0.25 per call |
Starter is $49 a month for 200 answered calls, then 45 cents each, which fits you if you're a small room taking overflow during service. A busy single site normally needs Professional at $149 for 750 calls, then 35 cents, and if you run a group look at the multi-location pricing instead.
Slang.ai holds a vertical-specialist price at $399 per location as of September 2026. Ask yourself whether its reservation depth is worth that difference for your room, because for a lot of single sites it won't be.
It does not take food orders
What operators ask
Will it double-book my room?
It books against the availability it can read. On your calendar that's a direct write. On OpenTable, Resy or SevenRooms there's no verified path, so the reservation is captured and your host enters it, which keeps your platform the source of truth.
Can it answer allergen questions?
It reads your policy word for word and flags the booking for your kitchen. It won't judge whether a dish is safe, and no phone system should.
What about a party of twenty?
You set the threshold, and anything above it routes to your manager with the party size, the date and the contact. Large parties and private hire are a conversation, not a form.
Does it take orders for collection?
No. This answers your calls and takes reservations. Ordering, payment and delivery belong to your ordering platform.
How does it compare to Slang.ai?
Slang is built for restaurants and priced around $399 a location as of September 2026, with reservation depth we don't match. We're cheaper, we publish the overage rate, and we're not restaurant-only. Pick on whichever of those matters to your room.
Other rooms and front desks
Hear it take a Friday booking
Your covers, your allergen wording, two minutes.