The Proprietor Cafe
30% More Bookings. 15 Hours a Week Back.
The Challenge
What they were facing
The Proprietor had earned its reputation the hard way: exceptional coffee, locally sourced seasonal food, a warm team, and years of consistency. The result was a TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice award, a ranking of #4 out of 263 restaurants in their city, and over 500 genuine five-star reviews. By any hospitality measure, the product was exceptional.
But behind the scenes, the business was running entirely on manual processes. During the morning rush and peak lunch service, the phone rang constantly — and frequently went unanswered. Each missed call was a potential booking, a catering enquiry, or a group reservation that went to a competitor down the street. Reservations were managed manually, with no automated confirmation or reminder system. No-shows were a recurring frustration.
Admin tasks — booking management, enquiry responses, customer communications — were consuming staff hours that the business couldn't afford to lose. In regional hospitality, every staff member is doing multiple jobs. The team needed a smarter way to operate.
Our Approach
How we solved it
Conversational AI Voice Agent for Call Handling
We deployed a conversational AI voice agent to handle inbound calls during peak service hours and after operating hours. The AI agent answers in natural language, confirms booking availability, captures reservation details, and routes complex queries to the team during quieter periods. The result: no more missed calls during the lunch rush, and no more enquiries lost to an unanswered phone on a Sunday evening.
Automated Booking Confirmations and Reminders
We connected the booking system to our automation platform, triggering automated SMS and email confirmations immediately after a reservation is made, and reminder messages 24 hours before the booking. This single workflow reduced no-shows significantly and eliminated the staff time previously spent on manual reminder calls.
Automated Review Request Workflow
We built an automated post-visit review request sequence into the customer journey. After a dine-in visit, guests receive a well-timed, personalised message thanking them for coming and inviting them to share their experience on Google. The timing, tone, and channel were calibrated to maximise response rates without feeling intrusive. Within months, Google review volume had increased substantially.
CRM and Customer Database
We centralised customer data into a CRM within our automation platform — giving the café a searchable, actionable database of guests for the first time. This enabled targeted communications for events, seasonal menus, and special promotions, and created the infrastructure for a loyalty programme whenever the team was ready to launch one.
The Results
What we achieved
80%
Booking Efficiency Improvement
30%
More Bookings Captured
40%
Increase in Google Reviews
15 hrs/wk
Saved on Admin Tasks
Before the automation engagement, The Proprietor was running a top-quality hospitality business on entirely manual systems. Within weeks of implementation, missed calls had been eliminated, booking admin had been automated, and Google reviews were accumulating at a rate that matched the café's actual reputation. The team gained back hours every week — hours reinvested into the floor, the food, and the experience.
Results achieved for this specific client. Individual outcomes vary based on industry, starting position, competition, engagement scope, and market conditions. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
“The amount of calls we were missing during service — we knew it was a problem but didn't realise how many bookings we were losing until we fixed it. The AI answering system paid for itself in the first month. The review automation has been brilliant too. We always had happy customers, we just weren't capturing it. Now we are.”
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