How to Stop Missing Restaurant Phone Orders During Busy Periods
Why restaurants miss phone orders during busy periods
Someone rings to order. The line's engaged, or it just rings out. So they call the place down the road, or open a marketplace app and order there instead - and if they come back to you that way, you're paying commission on it.
The calls you miss on a Friday or Saturday night are often the big ones. Group orders, people with special requests, regulars who'd rather talk to someone than tap through an app. Nobody picks up, and that order goes somewhere else.
Why it happens is no mystery. Everyone is on the floor or in the kitchen. There's one phone line, with no queue and no callback. Nobody has been told that answering the phone is their job during service. And half the time it's too loud to hear the caller anyway.
How much does a missed phone order cost?
Phone orders in the UK tend to be bigger than online ones. £35-£60 is common for delivery, and table bookings for large groups or catering enquiries are worth a lot more.
Say a restaurant misses 10 calls on each of four busy evenings a week. That's 40 missed calls. At a £40 average order, it's £1,600 a week, or about £83,000 a year.
Most restaurants aren't missing 40 calls a week. But three or four missed £50 orders a week is still well over £7,000 a year.
Ways to handle more phone orders
Put someone on the phone during peak service
The simplest fix. One person's main job during the Friday rush is answering the phone, taking orders and getting them to the kitchen.
That works if you can spare someone from the floor or the kitchen. If you're running with two or three people on shift, you can't.
Get a multi-line phone system
A business phone system with queuing or hold music means callers hear a message and wait instead of getting an engaged tone. Fine, as long as they're willing to wait and someone eventually picks up. Plenty of people won't wait. And if the team still can't get to the phone, the queue just gets longer.
Push callers to online ordering
Use your voicemail message and your marketing to send people to your online ordering website or app. Some callers will switch if you tell them clearly where to go.
This only helps if your direct ordering actually works and customers trust it. It does nothing for the caller who wants to ask whether the curry can be made without nuts, or who just prefers talking to a person.
Use AI phone ordering
An AI phone agent answers every call, takes the order by talking to the customer, and sends it to the kitchen. Nobody on staff touches it.
It's a good fit when most of your calls are straightforward orders. Complicated requests can still trip it up, so check that the system you choose can pass a call to a member of staff when it needs to.
How Flipdish AI Phone Agent works
The Flipdish AI Phone Agent picks up calls to your restaurant, takes the order in conversation and drops it straight into the kitchen queue with your online and in-person orders.
It answers straight away, at any hour. It handles the whole order: menu items, customisations, delivery address and payment. Orders go directly to the Flipdish POS and kitchen display, so nobody is rewriting a ticket from a scribbled note. And because it's never on another call, nobody gets an engaged tone.
Picture a Friday night with three tables waiting to order, two walk-ins at the door and a delivery rider standing at the counter. The phone still gets answered on the first ring, and your staff stay with the people in front of them.
What to do this week
- Check your phone system. Is it a single line? Can you add a queue or hold option?
- Record a voicemail that tells callers where to order online
- Put your online ordering link on Google Maps, in your website header and on any printed menus
- Work out which shifts you miss the most calls on
- Multiply those missed calls by your average order value to get a rough figure for what they cost you
- Look at AI phone ordering for busy periods and compare the cost with that figure
Does AI phone ordering pay for itself?
Five extra £45 orders a week is £225 a week, or £11,700 a year. If you get steady call volume in the evenings and at weekends, compare that number with what the AI agent costs. For most busy restaurants, the missed calls cost more.
To get your own number, take the calls you miss on your busiest evening, multiply by your average phone order value, then by 52. That's the most AI phone ordering could be worth to you. The real figure will be lower, because not every missed caller was going to order.
How Flipdish helps
Flipdish has an AI Phone Agent built for restaurants. It connects to your POS system and online ordering, so phone, online and in-person orders all end up in one place.
Want to stop losing phone orders? Explore Flipdish AI Phone Agent or see the full Flipdish platform.