heytruffle, a managed AI phone concierge service formerly known as RestoHost, has raised new funding from Preface Ventures and added two significant capabilities: order-taking for pickup and delivery, and a direct integration with OpenTable. The Fort Lauderdale-based company plans to use the capital to expand its service to more multi-location restaurant groups across the United States.
The Labor Squeeze Connection
The timing reflects a well-documented staffing gap at the front of house. The National Restaurant Association's 2025 State of the Industry report found that many operators lack sufficient staff to meet current demand — and an unanswered phone during peak service is often the first casualty. Separately, a 2025 Deloitte study found that 82 percent of restaurant executives planned to increase their AI investment, while a Toast survey of more than 700 operators found 86 percent were comfortable using AI tools. That comfort, however, has not always translated to adoption, and heytruffle is positioning itself as a lower-friction entry point by handling implementation and ongoing performance tuning on behalf of operators.
For foodservice operators already managing kitchen automation and robotics decisions alongside staffing, a fully managed phone service that works alongside existing POS and reservation systems represents a back-of-house-adjacent investment that requires no additional IT overhead.
How the Managed Model Works
Unlike self-service voice AI platforms that operators configure and run independently, heytruffle builds a custom AI concierge for each restaurant and pairs it with a human team that reviews calls and refines the system on a weekly basis. The concierge handles reservations, catering inquiries, private event bookings, and general guest questions, routing callers to live staff when the situation requires a person. The service now also accepts pickup and delivery orders — a meaningful expansion for operators managing high call volumes tied to off-premise demand.
The new OpenTable integration allows the concierge to book and manage reservations directly within a platform already embedded in many restaurant operations, reducing the friction of layering new technology onto existing prep-and-storage and front-of-house workflows. The concierge operates in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German — a practical consideration for operators in diverse markets.
Scale at Rreal Tacos
A current client illustrates what the model can look like at volume. Rreal Tacos, a 12-location group based in Georgia, runs heytruffle across all of its restaurants. The service processes more than 20,000 calls per month; in a representative month, it facilitated seating for 14,085 guests — demand that a busy host stand could not consistently capture during peak hours.
"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 room. This funding lets us bring that to more restaurant groups."
For equipment dealers and consultants advising multi-unit operators on kitchen buildouts and energy-and-sustainability upgrades, heytruffle's pitch is that labor recovered from phone duty can be redeployed to the line — a soft ROI argument that increasingly accompanies capital equipment conversations. As restaurant groups add units and build out commissary or ghost kitchen infrastructure, managing the guest communication channel at scale becomes a parallel operational challenge to managing the equipment fleet itself.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
