An answering service for restaurants that books the table while your host is seating one
Friday at seven, the host stand has a line, the phone is ringing under the reservation book, and the caller wants a table for six on Saturday. Ansurra answers in a natural voice, checks the calendar you connect, books the party, and emails the confirmation. The host keeps seating.
20 free minutes on your real line · no card · you keep your number
Where the call gets lost.
The moments a restaurants business misses the phone, and what each one costs.
The rush is when they call
People call restaurants at the exact hour restaurants cannot answer: the dinner push, Sunday brunch, the hour before a holiday. The host is walking a party of four to a booth, the phone rings six times, and the caller planning an anniversary dinner for next week gives up. That table was a bottle of wine and dessert. It went to the place that picked up.
Hours, parking, gluten-free, dogs on the patio
Many of the calls are not reservations at all. They ask whether you are open Monday, whether there is parking, whether the kitchen can do gluten-free, whether the patio allows dogs. Each takes a minute of a host's attention during service, and each one unanswered sends a would-be guest to a competitor's page. Those are cheap questions with expensive silence.
Large parties and private dining slip through voicemail
The most valuable call a restaurant gets is the office manager booking a holiday party for thirty, or the family planning a rehearsal dinner. Those calls come mid-afternoon, when the phone is often unstaffed between lunch and dinner prep. A voicemail box does not ask how many guests, what date, or whether they need the private room. The caller moves on to a venue that did.
What Ansurra does on the call.
The receptionist, in restaurants terms.
Reservations on the calendar you already keep
Ansurra takes reservations the way a host would: party size, date, time, name and any note about a birthday or a high chair. It books onto the calendar you connect, offering only times that are genuinely open, and emails the guest a confirmation with a reminder about a day before. Changes and cancellations are handled on the same call, so the eight-top that cancels frees the calendar at once.
Menu, hours and allergies, straight from your website
Paste your site and Ansurra learns your hours by day, your address and parking, your menu, and what you have written about allergies and dietary requests. When someone asks whether the kitchen can do dairy-free, it repeats your policy rather than promising the chef something. What it does not know, it says it does not know, and offers to take a message for the manager.
Large parties go to a person, with a briefing
For a party over the size you set, or a private-dining inquiry, Ansurra collects the guest count, date, budget range and contact, then either books the consultation on the calendar or transfers the call live to the manager's cell. With the warm option, the manager hears one line first: 'Rehearsal dinner, thirty-two guests, second Saturday in June, asking about the back room.' Then the caller is connected.
Prices from the menu you publish, in the caller's language
If your price list includes the prix fixe or the private-room minimum, Ansurra quotes it word for word and never rounds or improvises a number. A caller who starts in Spanish or Mandarin is answered in Spanish or Mandarin, switching mid-call if needed. Every call is transcribed and summarized, and a morning digest tells you last night's reservations, cancellations and the messages waiting for the manager.
A call, start to finish.
How a call to Alder & Ash Kitchen — a fictional business — plays out. The receptionist only offers times its calendar shows free and only quotes what the owner's price list says.
Ansurra vs. what you use today.
Voicemail, an answering service, a person at the desk: what each still does better, and what it costs.
Voicemail does not hold a table
A guest who reaches voicemail on a Friday does not leave a message and hope. She books elsewhere in the same minute. Ansurra answers, checks the calendar, books the party and confirms by email, so the Saturday you are counting on fills while your host is still on the floor.
A traditional answering service knows nothing about tonight
A live operator service is a real person, and some guests like hearing one. The operator still cannot see your calendar, does not know your menu, and takes a message you have to return during service. Where a human operator still wins: a guest disputing a charge or complaining about a server. Ansurra transfers those to the manager live rather than trying to settle them.
A second host for the phone alone
In a big room with a full front-of-house team, a phone host is the right hire. For most independent restaurants the phone is one more thing the one host does badly during the rush. Ansurra is the second host who only takes calls, works every shift including the closed Monday, and costs less than one shift a week.
How it works.
Paste your website
Ansurra reads your services, hours and service area and drafts its own knowledge. Add your price list if you want it quoting.
Forward your number
One dial code at your carrier — every call, or only the ones you miss. You keep the number your customers know.
It answers
From the next ring: it books on your calendar, emails confirmations, transfers emergencies to your cell and sends you every detail.
Restaurants, answered.
Does it work with our online reservation system, or replace it?
Ansurra books onto a calendar you connect, so phone reservations land there with the party size, time and notes. It is not a floor-plan or table-management system and does not turn tables. A simple way to run it is phone reservations through Ansurra and web bookings through your existing system, with the host reconciling the two as they already do with walk-ins.
Can it take takeout orders?
Not into your kitchen. Ansurra does not ring orders into a POS or take payment. It can tell callers your takeout hours, answer menu questions from your website, and either transfer the call to the host stand during service or take a detailed message and email it to you. That makes it a receptionist, not an order terminal, and it says so rather than pretending.
What does it do with a party of twenty?
You set the party size above which Ansurra stops booking directly. Above that number it collects guest count, date, occasion, budget range and contact details, then books a callback or planning consultation on the calendar, or transfers the call live to the manager with a one-line briefing first. Large-party inquiries show up at the top of your lead list, scored hot, with the reasons.
How does it handle no-shows and same-day cancellations?
When a guest calls to cancel, Ansurra cancels on the calendar during the call and the time opens immediately. If another guest asked for that slot earlier and took a waitlist spot, they are told it has freed up. The day-before reminder email is the other half: guests who are reminded tend to show, call to move, or cancel in time for you to reseat.
We're closed Mondays and the phone rings anyway. Does that count against our minutes?
Yes, talk minutes are talk minutes, and the Monday call that books Thursday's table is a good use of them. Starter is $29 a month for 60 minutes, Growth $49 for 180, Pro $99 for 400 with up to four numbers, Scale $299 for 1,000 minutes and up to seven. Overage is $0.35 a minute, $0.25 on Scale. Spam and robocalls are screened. Yearly gets a month free; the trial is 20 minutes, no card required.
Do we forward every call, or only during service?
Your choice, with one dial code from your carrier. One option is forwarding everything, so the host never touches the phone. The other is busy and no-answer only: the phone rings the host stand first and goes to Ansurra when it rings out during a push. Your number stays the same either way, and setup takes about two minutes from your website.
Put it on your phones.
Built from your website in about two minutes. 20 free minutes, no card, cancel anytime.
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