Glynn Hospitality is a family-owned Boston restaurant group with decades of history in the city. The group operates several distinct concepts, including The Black Rose, Coogan's, Clerys, Granary Tavern, and Dillons, Central Wharf Co.
“I'm happy with Slang because I think it allows our managers to be more present in person.”
Katie Freeman: Operations Manager, Glynn Hospitality
As guest behavior and operating patterns changed following COVID, Glynn Hospitality needed a way to capture reservations, private event inquiries, and guest questions when restaurant staff were unavailable.
For Katie Freeman, who oversees marketing, events, and technology initiatives for the group, the goal was also to give restaurant teams more time to focus on guests in the restaurant.
“The idea of utilizing a phone software to capture any reservations, event leads or questions that people have when we're not available was important to us,” said Katie Freeman, Operations Manager at Glynn Hospitality.
The phone also created an administrative burden during service. Hosts often had to juggle greeting guests at the door while simultaneously answering calls and managing reservations.
Glynn Hospitality implemented Slang AI to handle guest calls, book reservations, capture private event leads, and most importantly, free up the staff to focus on the in-house guest experience.
The Triplseat integration helps the group capture private event inquiries and route the information to Glynn Hospitality’s event manager, who manages events for all of their locations. In the past, phone inquiries could be difficult to capture and pass along accurately.
“We had a really hard time capturing phone inquiries before because by the time it got passed on to our event person the guest probably already found a different location or, you know, we have a post-it note with a typo on it and don’t know what the phone number is. So that's been a huge help,” said Freeman.
Slang also helps reduce the manual work associated with reservations. With the Resy integration, guests can make reservation changes without requiring a host to step away from the floor.
“It takes that load off of staff. They don’t have to worry about adjusting reservations that need to be canceled or updated. It saves us a lot of time,” said Freeman.
What’s more, Glynn Hospitality noted that the human support the Slang AI team offered throughout the onboarding process added additional confidence to their decision to roll out Slang.
“You came to me in person to address it as it was happening, and kept me updated the whole way through. That goes a long way,” said Freeman.
In the past 30 days, Slang saved Glynn Hospitality approximately 4,200 minutes of staff time and captured 43 Tripleseat leads, 3 of which converted to booked private events.
For Freeman, the biggest impact is giving managers and hosts more time to focus on hospitality.
“I'm happy with Slang because I think it allows our managers to be more present in person,” said Freeman.
The additional time also gives managers more opportunity to coach hosts, many of whom are just starting their hospitality careers, on the in-person guest experience.
“It allows management to take the time to work with the host to focus on what their presence is like at the door and being hospitable,” said Freeman.
Overall, Freeman considers Slang a net positive for Glynn Hospitality, while continuing to look for ways AI can become more useful as the technology evolves.
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