The Restaurant People (TRP) is a South Florida-based hospitality group known for its trendsetting restaurants and popular nightlife destinations. Since 1997, TRP has developed and operated more than 70 venues and is behind iconic Fort Lauderdale concepts, including YOLO, Boatyard, and Rooftop@1WLO. TRP continues to shape the region’s dining and entertainment landscape, focusing on innovation and guest experience.
With more than 10 restaurant concepts—many of which had limited service hours—TRP faced an overwhelming volume of incoming calls. Constantly tied-up phone lines were the norm at high-demand concepts like Boatyard, and ringing phones became an all too common distraction for front-of-house teams.
“The phone would ring off the hook all day long,” said Jeff Wandzek, Director of Front-of-House Operations for TRP. “Every single day, you couldn’t answer each incoming call. It didn’t matter how many hosts we had.”
TRP considered centralizing phone support, but the complexity of managing details across so many unique concepts wasn’t viable. “That person wouldn’t really know the answers about the restaurant,” noted Jeff. TRP needed a way to deliver fast, consistent guest service and streamline phone handling without impacting existing staff.
TRP first deployed Slang AI at Boatyard, where nonstop calls were a constant operational bottleneck. However, once the team saw how effectively the AI-powered concierge managed calls, the implementation eventually expanded to five more locations. “We liked the way it works so much that we started rolling it out to our other stores," said Jeff. "We saw consistency, guests were able to have their inquiries answered, and quite a bit of time savings on the labor side.”
Additionally, the official integration with OpenTable was proving crucial. This meant that the voice AI could seamlessly book reservations over the phone in real-time and sync directly with OpenTable.
In just four months, Slang AI booked over 3.2k reservations and handled over 62k inbound calls without ever involving human staff. Of those calls, 15% happened after-hours, and 13.4k were overlapping. This meant that Slang AI could quickly answer caller inquiries regardless of time of day or staff availability. Lastly, guests embraced the ease and convenience, reflected by a strong 94.6% caller satisfaction score across all automated calls.
“If anybody’s running businesses scaled similarly to us, this would be helpful in a lot of their stores. It’s a good product—it’s been very helpful to us.”
—Jeff Wandzek, Director of Front-of-House Operations
