Casaléna is a renowned and beloved restaurant operated by Avondale Hospitality in Los Angeles. More than a traditional restaurant, the expansive venue combines dining, events, programming, and private experiences, welcoming more than 300,000 guests each year. With a diverse customer base and a large footprint, Casaléna manages a significant volume of guest inquiries across reservations, events, dining questions, and more. For CMO Chloe Makhani and the broader Avondale Hospitality team, the guest experience begins long before someone walks through the door, including the moment they first call the restaurant.
"Just being able to have that positive touchpoint between the restaurant and the guest before they walk through the door is so important."
Chloe Makhani, CMO of Avondale Hospitality
Casaléna's call volume had reached a point where answering every guest simply was not humanly possible. Before implementing Slang, the restaurant had multiple staff members dedicated exclusively to answering phones. “Everyone was answering the phone calls at some point,” Makhani explained. Even with all staff members pitching in, callers frequently struggled to get through. The challenge became particularly acute during periods of high demand, when hundreds of calls could come in simultaneously. Casaléna needed a way to handle that volume without sacrificing the hospitality and accessibility its guests expected. “For us, the Casaléna experience starts before you enter the walls of our establishment,” said Makhani.
The team also recognized that not every caller needed a member of the staff. Guests often called in with simple questions, to check restaurant hours, ask about policies, or make and modify reservations. At the same time, many guests still preferred speaking with a person. Casaléna needed a solution that could handle routine interactions at scale while seamlessly allowing more complex conversations to reach the restaurant team.
Casaléna implemented Slang as an extension of its existing hospitality operation, creating a hybrid model in which AI and staff work together to manage guest calls. Slang handles a significant portion of incoming conversations, allowing guests to make reservations, modify bookings, get answers to common questions, and access information without waiting for a team member. When a guest needs or prefers human assistance, the call can still reach the restaurant staff immediately through guest routing. “Just being able to have that positive touchpoint between the restaurant and the guest before they walk through the door is so important,” Makhani asserted.
This approach has allowed Casaléna to scale its phone experience without requiring its team to scale at the same rate. Slang also supports the restaurant's broader events operation, helping capture and organize event inquiries alongside Casaléna's existing private event lead processes. Rather than replacing the human element of hospitality, the team views Slang as a way to make sure more guests can actually reach the restaurant and that staff can spend their time where a human touch matters most.
The impact has been significant for a restaurant operating at Casaléna's scale. In a single month, Slang handled more than 4,000 calls, including nearly 1,000 coinciding calls, when multiple guests were trying to reach the restaurant simultaneously. Casaléna also achieved a 95% guest satisfaction score, demonstrating that high-volume automation does not have to come at the expense of the guest experience.
During the same period, Slang helped facilitate nearly 400 reservations, while approximately 45% of calls were fully automated, meaning guests were able to complete their interactions without involving restaurant staff. The result is a more accessible phone experience for guests and a more manageable workload for the Casaléna team, all while keeping the guest experience at the center.
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