A different approach to restaurant AI
Much of the voice AI entering restaurants is built to automate as much as possible, as fast as possible. heytruffle was built the other way around. Rather than a self-serve tool that a restaurant configures and maintains on its own, the company operates the phone as a managed service, and it treats hospitality, not automation, as the point.
That difference shows up in how the product is built. Each restaurant gets its own AI concierge, trained on that restaurant’s menu, tone, policies, and workflows, rather than a single generic assistant applied across every client. A human team reviews calls and refines the system each week, and when a caller needs a person, the call is routed to the restaurant’s staff.
Personalization as the standard
The company’s premise is that a restaurant’s phone is part of its brand, and should sound like it. A steakhouse and a neighborhood taqueria do not greet a caller the same way, and heytruffle’s model is designed so that each concierge reflects the specific restaurant it represents. The concierge operates in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German, reflecting the increasingly multilingual reality of U.S. hospitality.
The stated aim is to protect the guest experience rather than replace staff. By handling routine calls, the service is meant to free front-of-house teams to focus on the guests in front of them, an argument the company traces to its own roots in restaurant operations rather than in software.
Proven in high-volume operations
One of its clients, Rreal Tacos, a 12-location group in Georgia, illustrates the model at scale. heytruffle handles more than 20,000 calls a month across those locations. In a typical month, the service supported the seating of 14,085 guests, capturing demand during peak hours that a fully booked host stand could not always reach.
A phone channel under pressure
The rebrand and funding arrive as full-service restaurants continue to face staffing constraints. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 State of the Industry report, many operators say they do not have enough employees to meet the demand they already have. When dining rooms are short-staffed, incoming calls are often the first to go unanswered, and reservations, catering leads, and large-party bookings are among the most valuable demand a restaurant receives.
New capabilities and an OpenTable integration
As part of the announcement, heytruffle expanded what its AI concierge can handle, adding order-taking for pickup and delivery to its existing support for reservations, catering, and private events. The service is designed to integrate with the systems restaurants already rely on, including their POS and reservation platforms, so adopting it adds little operational work for already-stretched teams.
The company also introduced an integration with OpenTable that lets the concierge manage reservations within a booking platform many restaurants already use. The new funding from Preface Ventures, a New York-based venture firm, will support bringing the managed service to additional restaurant groups nationwide.
“Restaurants do not need another piece of software to manage,” said Lucas Espina, founder and CEO of heytruffle. “They need the phone handled with the same care they give the guests in the dining room. This funding lets us bring that to more restaurant groups.”
