Phone Orders: The Overlooked Revenue Stream in Your Restaurant

This is a guest blog courtesy of our partners at TastyVox.

It's Tuesday afternoon, and you're attending to guests at your restaurant. Your phone rings once, twice - then stops. Probably nothing important, right? Except it was a $55 pickup order for next week. And when they couldn't reach you, they moved on to the next restaurant on their list.

Most restaurant owners don't think much about missed calls. But here's what might surprise you: More than 15 -  35% of restaurant customers still prefer to order by phone. Not through apps, not through third-party platforms—they want to call and talk to someone. 

Despite all the digital ordering options available, phone orders still account for roughly 20-30% of total restaurant sales. That's a significant chunk of revenue. And if you're missing even 20-30% of those calls during busy periods—which is typical—you're leaving serious money on the table. If you get 50 calls per week and miss just 15 of them at an average order of $35, that's $2,100 in lost revenue every month. Over $25,000 per year walking out the door.

Calculate your actual lost revenue here →

Why 2025 Feels Different

No sugar-coating : 2025 has been a tough year for the restaurant industry - a classic macro squeeze.. Even established players have been struggling with this growing trend of decline in sales and revenue - This downturn feels worse than COVID because it's much slower and ambiguous with no emergency exits. There are a few factors to this:

1. Eating at home patterns with evolving consumer food preferences.
2. Macro economic trends and user behaviours.
3. Inflation, with rising food and labor costs.

While food service, location and culture form the non-negotiable strong pillars of your restaurant and the hospitality brand, the tricks that worked previously no longer just work inside the four walls. This is about diversifying the range of services offered and generating new revenue streams to combat the rising costs, while being lean and efficient. It's about extracting value from existing customers and bringing in efficiencies through capturing lost revenue. 

The Smart Play: Multiple Revenue Streams

The restaurants surviving—and thriving—right now aren't doing one big thing. They're doing several small things. Examples include:

1. New services: Given the holiday season, gift certificates and merchandise that caters to local tastes are a hit, but consider going deeper: showcase local supply chains by hosting farmers' markets or even endorsing local schools, auto-meetups, sports teams, office parties for hosting meetings and parties at your restaurants. Consider adding curated culinary experiences like restaurant tours, tasting and pairing nights, chef dinners, or pizza mornings for kids.
2. Strategic menu moves: Consider pausing the bottom 20% sellers (even if they seemingly are fan favorites) while pushing 2-3 high margin anchors aggressively. Creating keywords in your SOPs that service staff should use to sell these. Small format premium upsells for sides, sauces, and upgrades also help. “Limited-time” add-ons that go away when they no longer serve you. Bundles and combos are another way to increase average order size.
3. Smarter labor deployment: Not labor cuts but optimized deployment. Instead of adding coverage, cross-train for flexible roles. Dynamic scheduling, instead of spreading staff thin, can free up time that pulls them away from guests. Like answering phones during dinner rush. 
4. Leverage technology: Not just advertising or social media spend. Look for programs and tools with direct ROI - like retargeting, loyalty, direct to customer engagement, voice answering AI receptionists. The key question is did it help you drive bottom-line growth-- by recapturing lost revenue, keeping customers longer, increasing lifetime value or average order size – and not just cool technology. 

The key is to experiment with some of these small initiatives and double down on what works for you. Bonus points and preference to initiatives that double-up  and stack results across these categories (like recapturing lost revenue while optimizing labor). The most successful and forward thinking restaurants are using AI as the new path to growth—capturing more revenue instead of cutting  costs. 

Why Phone Ordering Still Matters

During busy periods, your staff faces an impossible choice: answer the phone or help the guest in front of them. They multi-task: They attend to the guest (which they should), but also have to answer the phone, which often means they’re putting the guest on hold. And you're losing that phone order.

Here's the thing about phone calls—customers call because they have questions, want reassurance about something, need help with modifications, or are driving and can't use an app. They're not trying to be difficult. They just need to talk to someone. They're not going away—this channel matters. But here's what most restaurant owners don't realize: there's a significant opportunity gap: Online orders tend to be 18-20% larger than traditional phone orders. Why? Because digital interfaces consistently suggest add-ons. "Add guacamole?" "How about chips and salsa?" "We have fresh horchata today." The suggestions are built into the ordering flow, appear with appetizing photos, and customers can browse without feeling rushed.

Phone orders, on the other hand, depend entirely on whether your staff has time to offer those upsells. During rush hour, they're focused on getting the order right and moving on. The upsells get skipped. The order stays smaller. This is the real problem with phone ordering—not that customers don't want to spend more, but that the experience doesn't consistently encourage it. 

Voice AI receptionists solve exactly this problem:  It brings the same consistent experience with ordering and upselling that makes online orders larger to the phone channel that 35%+ of restaurant customers still prefer. It handles conversations the way a good team member would when they have time—consistently offering add-ons, answering questions patiently, taking complex orders accurately. Your staff can focus on the dining room, and phone orders get captured with the same upselling power as your online ordering system.

If you're on GoTab, the setup is even simpler. Orders go directly into your existing POS. No manual entry, no new hardware, no retraining. The kitchen just sees another order come through.

What To Look For 

When evaluating vendors for such receptionists, go beyond the basic factors like 24/7 availability, no missed calls or clean integration into the POS. Consider factors that are important to you: whether it is an affordable solution, or capturing the tone and hospitality brand of your restaurant - just like your staff would answer the call, greeting customizations, text ordering, upselling or multilingual capabilities, all while demonstrating ROI. 

The real test: Will this capture more revenue than it costs without compromising the hospitality you've built?

Meet TastyVox

TastyVox is a voice AI answering receptionist, designed for GoTab restaurants that takes 100% of calls and handles them with the same hospitality standards you expect at the counter. It takes orders that submit straight into GoTab, all while keeping your restaurant’s brand & tone intact, customizing greetings and upsell, transferring hand-offs, without a deep cut into your pockets, at a much affordable rate. TastyVox  focuses on:

1. Hospitality brand: Natural conversations, branded greetings, and handling complexity gracefully.
2. Seamless GoTab integration: Built for your POS, tested with real restaurants, set up fast. 
3. Immediate ROI: Affordable enough that at 7-15 recovered orders per month, it pays for itself. Your numbers may vary—so the best test is always your own call volume.

To learn more about TastyVox and experience a 7-day risk-free trial that proves ROI, book a demo now. You also get the dashboard showing answered calls, orders captured and analytics. 

Want to hear it first?  

Call +1 (951) 603-9410 right now and try the voice agent— experience how it handles modifiers, menu questions, and brand tone in real-time. 

Be smart this holiday season, start capturing every phone order, with consistent upsell! 

About TastyVox: TastyVox is a voice AI receptionist that ensures restaurants never miss another phone order, answering every call with natural conversation, accurate order-taking, payment links and consistent upselling that matches online ordering performance. Deeply integrated with GoTab, we make it effortless to capture every phone order while your team focuses on in-person hospitality"

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