How to Stop Missing Restaurant Phone Orders During Busy Periods
Why restaurants miss phone calls
Friday at 7pm. Every table is full, there's a queue at the counter and the kitchen is flat out. The phone rings and nobody picks it up, because nobody can.
The phone gets busiest at exactly the times your team has the least spare hands. Saturday lunch, bank holidays, the night of a big match - same story.
The customer hangs up and rings the takeaway down the road. That order never shows up in any report, so you don't know how often it happens. That's why most owners underestimate it.
How much revenue do missed phone orders cost?
Take a restaurant that gets 50 phone orders a week and misses 15% of them during busy periods. That's 7 or 8 orders. At £25 each, it's about £190 a week, or roughly £10,000 a year.
That's probably on the low side:
- Plenty of restaurants miss more than 15% of calls at peak
- People who can't get through usually don't call back
- Some of those callers are regulars, and losing a regular costs a lot more than one order
If phone orders are a big part of your takings, this adds up fast.
Ways to stop missing phone orders
Send callers to online ordering
When everyone's busy, an automated message plays: "We're busy right now - you can order in 60 seconds at [website]. We'll text you a link." The caller gets a short URL or an SMS that takes them straight to your direct ordering website.
Some people will still hang up. But some will order, and nobody on your team had to stop what they were doing.
Use AI phone ordering
AI phone ordering answers every call. The customer says what they want, the AI reads it back, handles changes like "no onions" or "make that a large", takes payment and sends the order to the kitchen.
For the customer it's close to talking to a person. For you, every call gets answered and nobody has to type the order into the till afterwards.
Add a call queue
Basic call queuing tells callers they're in a queue instead of giving them an engaged tone or voicemail. Fewer people hang up during a short rush.
It won't help much if you're too busy to answer the phone every Friday night. A queue only works if someone eventually picks up.
Move your regulars online
Get the people who always phone in to order through your branded mobile app or website instead, and the phone rings less. Loyalty points, a free side or a one-off discount is often enough to change the habit.
Once they're ordering through your app or website, you can also reach them with AI marketing and loyalty offers. You can't do that with someone who just rings.
Hire someone to answer the phone at peak
It works, but you pay for it. One person on Friday and Saturday evenings does nothing but take calls and deal with online order questions. That fixes those shifts. It also adds to your wage bill, and you'd need someone like that at every site.
Why AI phone ordering makes sense on cost
If you get a steady number of phone orders every week, AI phone ordering is usually cheaper than paying staff to answer them.
| Factor | Staff-only | AI phone agent |
|---|---|---|
| Calls answered during peak | Depends on who's free | All |
| Cost per order taken | Part of an hourly wage | Fixed platform fee |
| Mistakes from rushed calls | Common | Doesn't get rushed |
| Adding more locations | Needs more staff | No extra staff |
| Getting orders to POS and kitchen | Someone types them in | Automatic |
Groups get more out of it. Ten restaurants can take phone orders at every site without putting a phone person in each one.
How Flipdish handles restaurant phone orders
The Flipdish AI Phone Agent is part of Flipdish's restaurant AI platform. It answers calls, takes orders by talking to the customer and sends them straight to the Flipdish POS and kitchen display system.
Phone, web, app and kiosk orders all land in the same system. The kitchen works from one queue and doesn't need to care how the customer ordered.
To hear how the Flipdish AI Phone Agent handles a real call, contact Flipdish for a demo.