The Brief

Restaurants lose opportunities every time the phone rings during a busy service and nobody is available to answer.

Thyra was created to solve that problem.

The goal was to build an automated phone system that could answer incoming calls, speak naturally with customers, understand reservation requests, and complete table bookings without requiring a member of staff to stop what they were doing.

The Challenge

Phone calls remain an important booking channel for restaurants, but they are also highly disruptive.

During peak hours, staff are focused on guests, food, and service. Answering every call is often unrealistic, which means potential bookings can easily be missed.

The challenge was to automate the process without making the experience feel robotic or creating additional work for the restaurant team.

Our Approach

We mapped the full reservation workflow from the moment a customer calls to the moment a booking is confirmed.

The system was then designed around the most common customer requests — checking availability, choosing a date and time, confirming the number of guests, collecting the necessary information, and completing the reservation.

The priority was to make the experience feel simple for both sides: effortless for the customer and almost invisible to restaurant staff.

AI Call Handling

When a customer calls, the AI assistant can answer the phone and handle the conversation in real time.

It understands the reason for the call, collects the relevant booking information, answers basic reservation-related questions, and guides the customer through the process naturally.

This allows restaurants to respond to calls even when the team is busy or unavailable.

Automated Reservations

Once the required information has been collected, the system can complete the reservation through the restaurant’s booking workflow.

Availability can be checked before confirming a table, helping prevent conflicts while removing the need for manual back-and-forth.

The result is a more direct path from incoming call to confirmed booking.

Missed-Call Recovery

A major focus of Thyra is reducing the value lost through unanswered calls.

Instead of allowing a busy phone line to become a missed opportunity, the automated system acts as an additional front-of-house resource that can continue handling enquiries while the physical team focuses on guests.

This makes the phone channel significantly more reliable without requiring additional staff.

Customer Experience

Automation was designed to support the restaurant experience rather than replace the human side of hospitality.

Customers can still interact naturally through the phone, but they no longer depend on someone being immediately available behind the counter.

For straightforward reservation requests, the process becomes faster and more convenient.

Operational Impact

Thyra removes one of the most repetitive interruptions from restaurant operations.

Staff spend less time answering routine reservation calls, fewer potential bookings are lost during busy periods, and customers receive a response even outside the moments when the team can reach the phone.

It effectively creates an additional booking channel that can operate continuously.

Outcome

The result is a restaurant reservation workflow that requires significantly less manual involvement.

Thyra helps restaurants capture more incoming demand, reduce missed-call losses, and free staff from repetitive booking conversations.

Instead of every phone call depending on an available employee, the system turns the restaurant’s phone line into an automated booking assistant built to convert calls into reservations.