How a short-staffed restaurant can still answer every call and booking.
Short answer: use one always-on agent across your phone, website chat, email and Instagram messages, all reading from the same checked information about your restaurant. It answers every call and message in your restaurant's own voice, day and night, takes the booking, and hands anything tricky to a person. Your team stays on the floor, and the enquiries that used to ring out or sit unread get caught and turned into bookings.
Why do short-staffed restaurants lose so many bookings?
Because the phone, the inbox and the Instagram messages all arrive during service, when everyone is already busy. With a smaller team this year, there is simply no one free to pick up. And when no one answers, the guest does not wait. They book at the next place that replies. So the booking is not really lost to a competitor's food, it is lost to whoever answered first.
This is worse in 2026 than it was, for a simple reason: there are fewer people. Since the last Budget, hospitality has been the hardest hit part of the whole economy for jobs, making up nearly half (45%) of all UK job losses. Teams are leaner, so more enquiries go unanswered at exactly the busy moments when they come in.
What is the best way to answer the phone when you are short-staffed?
There are three common options. Here is how they compare for a busy independent restaurant.
| Option | Answers 24/7 | Sounds like you | Knows your menu and allergens | Takes the booking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself, between tables | No, only when free | Yes | Yes | When someone can |
| A traditional answering service | Often limited hours | Reads a generic script | No, just takes a message | Rarely |
| An always-on agent (Sorino) | Yes, day and night | Yes, in your own voice | Yes, from your own record | Yes, and hands hard cases to a person |
The difference that matters: a message service takes a note and leaves you to call back, by which point the table is often gone. An agent answers the question and confirms the booking in the moment, which is what stops the leak.
Will an AI agent get allergens or bookings wrong?
Not if it is set up properly. A good agent answers allergen and dietary questions from your own written, checked record, never from a guess, and if anything is uncertain it tells the guest a person will confirm. Anything complicated is passed straight to your team with the full conversation attached. Every call and message is logged and readable, so nothing happens out of sight. The point is coverage for the hours your people cannot pick up, with a person always in charge of the hard calls. See how it handles dietary and allergen questions and reservations.
Does it replace my front-of-house team?
No. It works alongside them. Think of it as someone on the end of the phone who never clocks off, catching the calls and messages your team cannot get to during service, and handing anything real over to them. Your front of house still runs the room and looks after the guests in it. The agent just makes sure the enquiries coming in from outside do not fall through the cracks.
How much does it cost compared with hiring someone?
Every hour of staff time now costs more than it did. From April 2026 the wage floor for staff aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour, and on top of pay employers pay National Insurance at 15%, so the real cost of an hour worked is well above the headline wage. Hiring a person just to answer the phone is hard to justify for most independents. An always-on agent covers every channel for a flat monthly cost, with no extra person to recruit or train.
How quickly can it go live?
About six weeks. The first couple of weeks load your menus, hours, policies and voice and set the rules for when to hand over to a person. Then voice and website chat go live and get tuned to how your restaurant actually talks. Then email and Instagram messages are added, with reporting turned on so you can see calls answered, enquiries converted and bookings taken outside staffed hours.
The short version
- Fewer staff plus more enquiries at peak means bookings leak to whoever answers first.
- An always-on agent answers the phone, chat, email and Instagram in your restaurant's voice, around the clock.
- It books from your real availability, answers allergens from a checked record, and hands hard cases to a person.
- It works alongside your team, not instead of them, for a flat monthly cost.
- It goes live in about six weeks and is answering in real restaurants now.
Sources
- Hospitality is the hardest hit sector for jobs since the last Budget, nearly half (45%) of all UK job losses. UKHospitality, 2026. ukhospitality.org.uk
- National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour from April 2026. GOV.UK, 2026. gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
- Employer National Insurance is charged at 15%. GOV.UK, 2026. gov.uk/national-insurance-rates-letters
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