Riot Hospitality Group is a premier national hospitality management company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, boasting several unique concepts across the country. From sustainable, farm-to-table full-service dining, to high-octane dayclubs and nightclubs, Riot Hospitality Group has established itself as an idiosyncratic leader in both dining and nightlife.
“We looked at Slang and several other competitors in your space and really felt that Slang’s unique focus on hospitality as an industry was what put you heads and tails above your competition.”
– J Goldin, Systems Director at Riot Hospitality Group
Despite Riot’s focus on excellence in-venue, the phone experience fell short of the brand’s standards. J Goldin, Systems Director at Riot Hospitality Group, noted that the experience was noticeably misaligned. “I was not happy with where we were at before Slang at all. It was a really substandard experience that was not representative of the Riot experience,” Goldin said. Like many hospitality groups, Riot relied on a traditional IVR phone tree that routed callers through rigid menu options, robotic prompts, and frequent dead ends to voicemail. While functional, the system felt transactional and disconnected from the elevated, human-first experience guests received at Riot locations. With more than 5,000 inbound calls per month across the portfolio, even a “just okay” phone experience represented thousands of missed opportunities to connect with guests, capture reservations, and generate event leads. Riot needed a solution that could scale without adding labor, align with hospitality values, and finally bring the phone experience up to the same standard as the rest of the business.
Riot Hospitality Group selected Slang AI for its hospitality-first approach to conversational AI and its ability to deliver a more natural, elevated guest experience over the phone. “We looked at Slang and several other competitors in your space and really felt that Slang’s unique focus on hospitality as an industry was what put you heads and tails above your competition,” Goldin said. Unlike traditional IVR systems or generic AI solutions, Slang AI was purpose-built for hospitality, with native integrations into the leading platforms Riot was already using, such as OpenTable and Tripleseat. “Because of the OpenTable integrations and the Tripleseat integrations, we've booked seven OpenTable reservations and generated one real qualified private event lead via slang in the last 36 hours, and some of those are tables that might not have booked otherwise,” Goldin remarked.
The Riot team was also bullish on getting Slang AI implemented before the new year, and having just started engaging with the Slang AI team in December 2025, they had no time to waste. Implementation moved at record speed: the Slang AI team launched all 12 locations in a single week, with seamless onboarding and minimal internal lift. “It's record time for me, for a whole new system, for sure. And the launch has been silk, just perfectly smooth,” Goldin said.
Within the first 36 hours of going live, Riot’s capture rate skyrocketed. “We went from a sort of 35 to 40% call capture rate up to 65%. 23% more guests have connected with our business in a meaningful way,” Goldin said. Not to mention, in that same window, Slang AI directly drove seven OpenTable reservations and generated a qualified private event lead. For Riot, Slang AI became the “better gelato spoon” (a very apt Will Guidara reference that Goldin made) of phone systems: removing friction, elevating the experience, and driving measurable revenue without sacrificing hospitality.
