Restaurant Virtual Receptionist and Answering Service
The dinner rush rings hardest.
Frontly answers every call while your team is on the floor, and books the table.
The short answer
What is Frontly's restaurant virtual receptionist?
Frontly is an AI receptionist and answering service for Australian restaurants, cafes and takeaways. It answers every call 24/7, takes and changes table bookings, answers menu and dietary questions, takes takeaway orders, and phones diners back to confirm bookings. Every call lands in your Frontly dashboard, and standard inbound answering is live in about an hour.
THE PROBLEM
The Busiest Hour Is the Hour You Can't Answer
33,700
job vacancies in Australian accommodation and food services in August 2026. A short-staffed floor still has to seat, serve and answer the phone.
Source: ABS Job Vacancies, August 2026
51%
of accommodation and food services businesses had trouble finding suitable staff in 2022, the highest of any industry.
Source: ABS Business Conditions and Sentiments, June 2022
24/7
answering, public holidays included, so a 10pm booking or a takeaway order in the middle of service is taken instead of ringing out.
HEAR IT FOR YOURSELF
Your AI Receptionist Is Ready to Take a Booking
Call our AI agent right now. It handles a table booking and a menu question the way it would for your restaurant. No signup required.
Test Call
Talk to the AI agent right now from your browser. Hear exactly how Frontly will sound for your business.
HOW IT WORKS
Live in About an Hour. No Disruption to Service.
Connect Your Phone
Forward your existing restaurant line or use a dedicated AI number. No hardware changes, and your team keeps answering when they can.
We Help Set Up Your First Workflow
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your sittings, table sizes, menu, dietary information and booking rules.
Go Live
Frontly answers every call, takes bookings and orders, passes function enquiries to your manager, and phones diners to confirm.
WHAT FRONTLY HANDLES
Every Restaurant Call, Handled
From a Friday-night table for six to a takeaway order for the Saturday rush, this restaurant virtual receptionist answers the calls your floor team can't get to. Flat monthly rate, every call captured in your Frontly dashboard.
Table bookings and changes
Takes the date, time, party size and name, then books, moves or cancels the table. Every booking lands in your dashboard with the full call transcript.
Dinner-rush overflow
Answers every call during service so none rings out, and transfers the ones that need a person to your manager with a spoken briefing.
Menu, dietary and allergen questions
Answers hours, parking, corkage, kids' options and dietary questions from the menu knowledge you provide. You decide which allergy questions go to a team member.
Takeaway orders
Takes the order by voice, reads it back and confirms it. Hear it work in the live voice-ordering demo, where orders reach a real ordering system during the call.
Functions and large groups
Captures the date, numbers, budget and dietaries for a birthday, wake or work Christmas party, then sends your manager the summary or transfers the call.
Messages and staff calls
Takes messages from suppliers, job applicants and lost-property callers, and puts urgent calls straight through to whoever is on shift.
OUTBOUND CAMPAIGNS
Outbound Campaigns Over Your Booking and Contact Lists
Load a list and Frontly works through it, retrying unanswered numbers and logging every outcome. Do Not Call Register screening and legal calling windows are built in, and promotional campaigns go only to your opted-in list.
Booking reminder campaign
The night before, Frontly calls every booking on tomorrow's list to confirm, change or cancel, so you know your covers and can refill any freed table.
Waitlist call-back campaign
Load your waitlist when a table frees up, and Frontly calls it in order, proposes the table, and books the first diners who say yes.
Function follow-up campaign
Frontly calls every function enquiry on your list to confirm final numbers and dietaries before your cut-off, and sends the counts to your team.
Missed-call call-back campaign
After a busy service, load the callers who asked to be called back, and Frontly rings each one, finds out what they need, and books the table or takes the message.
Seasonal bookings campaign
Ahead of Mother's Day or Christmas functions, Frontly rings your opted-in customer list, answers questions and books the tables of anyone interested.
Visual Workflow Builder
Script Your Front of House Without Code
Your First Workflow, Built With You
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your sittings, table sizes and booking rules: exactly what the AI asks before it holds a table.
Rules for Every Kind of Call
Route a function enquiry to your manager, a supplier to the kitchen, and a booking straight into the diary, each on its own path.
Menu Answers You Control
Write the answers for dietary, corkage and kids' questions once. Decide which allergy questions go to a person.
Change It Yourself
Update specials, hours and public holiday trading any time in the visual builder, without waiting on us.
Branch by Time of Day
Handle lunch, dinner service and after-close differently, so the dinner rush never follows the same path as a quiet Tuesday.
Cross-Call Memory
Your AI Remembers Every Regular
- Returning diners recognised the moment they call
- Past bookings and dietary needs recalled automatically
- No asking a regular to repeat their usual table or allergies
- Full call history on every caller before your team picks up
Frontly Dashboard
Every Booking Captured While Your Team Is on the Floor
Every Booking in One Place
Bookings arrive with the date, time, party size and name already captured, so your host actions them between seatings.
Full Transcript on Every Call
Read exactly what the diner asked for, including dietaries and special occasions, before you set the table.
Summaries Sent to Your Phone
Email or SMS the booking or message to the manager the moment the call ends.
Outcomes You Can Count
Every call ends with a labelled outcome, so you see bookings, orders and messages taken by phone.
Live Status Across the Venue
See what came in during service on one screen, and which calls were put through to staff.
Outbound Campaign Manager
Confirm Bookings and Fill Tables With Campaigns
Reminder Campaigns at Scale
Frontly calls tomorrow's whole booking list, so confirming covers is no longer a job for your host.
Waitlist and Cancellation Call-Backs
Load your waitlist after a cancellation and Frontly offers the freed table to each diner on it, in order.
Same Builder, No New Tool
Script each campaign in the same visual builder you used for inbound calls.
See What Landed
Track which campaigns confirmed covers, filled tables and found function leads, so you know which to run again.
INTEGRATIONS
Works with the software restaurants already runs on
Connect your AI receptionist to the software your team already uses, so Frontly can check availability, manage bookings and capture caller details as part of your reception workflow.
Restaurants and venues
Team messaging
CRM, calendars and productivity
Integrations support Frontly's reception and caller follow-up workflows. Available actions depend on the connected software and your setup.
Integration allowances vary by plan. See Pricing for what's included.
Not on the list, or need a specific workflow? Tell us what you use and what you'd like Frontly to handle. We'll check what's possible.
ANSWERING SERVICE OR AI
Should a restaurant use an answering service or an AI receptionist?
An answering service takes a message and leaves your host to ring the diner back after service. An AI receptionist finishes the booking while the diner is still on the line. For a restaurant, that means the table is confirmed at the dinner rush instead of waiting on a callback that may never happen.
Where a staffed answering service still wins
A person on the phone can read a caller planning a milestone dinner or a large celebration, and shape the whole evening around it. Hosts with years in the room also smooth over a complaint or a special request with a warmth that is hard to configure. If most of your calls are that kind of conversation, keep a human on the line.
Where Frontly wins
Most restaurant calls are repetitive: a table for four, opening hours, a dietary question, a takeaway order. Frontly handles those at any hour, answers several at once during service, and phones diners back to confirm, so the dinner rush stops being the moment the phone goes unanswered.
Most businesses end up running one or the other rather than both. If you are weighing it up properly, the full cost and capability breakdown is in Frontly against a human receptionist.
Bigger organisation?
Restaurant groups and multi-venue hospitality
Enterprise builds voice ordering and booking experiences to measure, connected to your group's own ordering and booking systems during the call. Own-cloud or on-premise deployment, SLA-backed uptime and a dedicated account manager.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Frontly takes the date, time, party size and name on the call, then books, moves or cancels the table to the rules you set for sittings and table sizes. Every booking lands in your Frontly dashboard with the full call transcript, and your team can be notified by email or SMS straight away.
On a full Friday service every call is picked up, even when several ring together, so nobody hits voicemail while your floor team seats and serves. Bookings and menu questions are handled on the call. A large function or a complaint goes to your manager by warm transfer, with a spoken briefing so the caller doesn't repeat themselves.
Yes. Frontly answers from the menu and dietary information you give it: hours, parking, corkage, kids' options, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes. You decide which questions it answers itself. Allergy-critical questions can be sent to a team member who knows the kitchen, so the AI never guesses on a serious allergy.
Yes. Frontly takes a takeaway order by voice, reads it back and confirms it with the caller. Getting the order into your own ordering system is a custom connection, scoped with you and quoted separately. The live voice-ordering demo shows an order reaching a real ordering system during the call.
A booking platform's add-on is built to fill tables inside that one system. A restaurant's phone does more: confirming tomorrow's covers, working a waitlist after a cancellation, putting a function enquiry through to the manager. Frontly runs those campaigns over the lists you load, warm-transfers to your staff, reports outcomes across every call, speaks more than 40 languages, and comes with a first workflow set up with you.
The restaurant booking platforms listed on this page are Requires vendor approval, so the software company approves the connection first, and we make that request with you. Google Calendar is Available. Either way your AI takes bookings from about an hour after setup, and each one lands in your Frontly dashboard for your host to action between seatings.
Yes. Run a booking reminder campaign and Frontly calls each booking on tomorrow's list, asks the diner to confirm, change or cancel, and logs the outcome. You learn who is not coming while there is time to re-offer the table or call the next group on your waitlist.
Yes. Frontly captures the date, guest numbers, budget, dietaries and occasion for a function or private-dining enquiry, then emails your manager the summary or transfers the call while the caller is on the line. A function follow-up campaign can then confirm final numbers before your cut-off.
Frontly speaks with a natural voice, and you choose from Australian-accent voices and write the greeting. Because callers meet the voice before anyone else at your venue, you set its tone, from relaxed cafe to fine dining.
Yes. A diner can ring in Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese or any of more than 40 languages, ask about the menu and book a table in that language, because Frontly answers in the language the caller speaks. Your team reads the call transcript in the dashboard.
Booking reminders go to diners who booked with you and are about their reservation. A Christmas functions or Mother's Day campaign is promotion, so it goes only to customers who opted in to hear from you. Either way, Frontly screens every number against the Do Not Call Register and keeps to legal calling windows, on every plan.
KEEP EXPLORING
Keep exploring Frontly for Restaurants
Go deeper on the capabilities, comparisons, and guides that matter most.
24/7 inbound answering
How Frontly answers every call, qualifies the caller, and books the job in your dashboard.
How inbound worksOutbound campaigns
Recalls, follow-ups, arrears, and lead reactivation dialled automatically at scale.
Run outboundAfter-hours answering
Diners ring to book after you close and before you open. See how late-night bookings and messages are taken.
See after-hoursVirtual receptionist cost in 2026
What human and AI receptionists actually cost in Australia, and where each wins.
Read the guideReady to Answer Every Call, Even at the Dinner Rush?
Set up your AI restaurant receptionist in about an hour. No commitment beyond the plan you pick. Flat monthly rate.