{"id":92344,"title":"☎️ 👨‍🍳 Certus AI: Replacing the Restaurant Phone Line with Voice AI","tagline":"The AI Phone System Restaurants Rely On","body":"**We’re Gurveer (CEO), Adam (CRO), and Isaac (CTO),** and we’re solving the $100B+ phone problem for restaurants\n\nhttps://youtu.be/ydTdJDJMiKE\n\n## TL;DR — Certus AI is an AI voice agent for restaurants. Certus answer every call, take orders, processes deliveries, and books reservations.\n\n---\n\n### ❌ The Problem\n\nRestaurants lose **up to $100,000 per year per location** because of missed calls.\n\n* The average restaurants gets 75 calls/day from customers trying to order, book, or ask a simple question\n* 25% of those calls go unanswered on any given day\n* Every missed call = lost revenue/ angry customer\n* Call centers are expensive. IVRs frustrate customers. Staff is overloaded.\n\nThe phone is still one of the most valuable channels in hospitality, yet it costs the industry **$100B+ annually**.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92344\u0026key=user_uploads/2362198/84bc1556-5735-4b05-8664-5054b06ba4e7)\n\n---\n\n### ✅ Our Solution\n\n**Certus AI is a multilingual Voice AI agent that answers every call:**\n\n* Takes orders\n* Books reservations\n* Processes deliveries\n* Handles complaints better than humans\n* And always upsells, increasing AOV\n\nIt answers every call, in real time, and **connects to POS, reservation and delivery systems like:**\n\n* Toast\n* Square\n* Clover\n* UberEats\n* DoorDash \u0026 more\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92344\u0026key=user_uploads/2362198/78dc0426-c23d-4db3-8144-4427fce04bc7)\n\n---\n\n### 🎯 Why Now\n\n* **72% of consumers** are comfortable speaking to AI if it means faster service\n* **LLMs and voice synthesis** have finally crossed the quality threshold for real-world use\n* **Labor costs are rising, staff is burning out**, and operators are actively searching for solutions\n* The **restaurant industry crossed $1T** in 2024 and it's bleeding $100B/year to missed calls, human error, and outdated workflows\n\n---\n\n### 👋 Who We Are\n\n---\n\nI’m Gurveer, and **I’ve been answering restaurant phones since I was 9.**\n\nMy family started with one location and grew to 11. At every stage, the phone _made or broke_ the business: missed calls meant missed orders, staff burnout, and broken operations. That chaos didn’t go away as we scaled.\n\n**In the early days, we couldn’t afford to lose revenue, BUT, we also couldn't afford to hire someone just to manage the phone.** So I became the phone guy. I was so obsessed with not missing calls that **I carried our restaurant hotline with me _everywhere:_** to the gym, school, or even parties. No joke. I’d step out mid-convo to take a catering order.\n\nLater, Adam (CRO) and I ran a growth startup for restaurants. We’d drive serious demand, but the same problem always came back: no one picked up the phone to covert that into revenue.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92344\u0026key=user_uploads/2362198/a1a5d359-a692-4803-8a78-357383fcd24d)\n\nThat obsession, and frustration, is what led us to build Certus. The phone line is still one of the most valuable, yet broken, parts of a restaurant. **Now, it’s finally being replaced by Certus AI.**\n\n---\n\n### **💬 What Our Customers Say**\n\n\u003e Certus **changed my life overnight.**”\n\u003e\n\u003e “We were losing the ability to give great in-house service… **the phone was killing us**.”\n\u003e\n\u003e “**70% of my business comes through the phone. That’s mine and my 16 staffs livelihood.**”\n\u003e\n\u003e “Before Certus, **I used to lose 40 - 60 calls a day…. now my printer just stays printing!**”\n\u003e\n\u003e “I’ve been in the business 38 years. **I’ve been waiting for this since then.**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92344\u0026key=user_uploads/2362198/ea3d515c-f5fe-4c96-9bb6-6357d7f6f510)\n\n---\n\n### 🙋 Our Ask\n\n* **Do you know a restaurant group, franchise operator, or overwhelmed manger?** A warm intro would mean the world!\n\n---\n\n### 👑 Thank you!\n\nWe’re super excited to introduce you to Certus AI, but more importantly, we’re excited to build and grow alongside all of you!\n\n**– Gurveer, Adam \u0026 Isaac**","slug":"O1Q-certus-ai-replacing-the-restaurant-phone-line-with-voice-ai","created_at":"2025-07-22T02:52:29.974Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T05:18:10.038Z","total_vote_count":30,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/O1Q-certus-ai-replacing-the-restaurant-phone-line-with-voice-ai","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=92344\u0026key=user_uploads/2362198/a1a5d359-a692-4803-8a78-357383fcd24d","company":{"id":30759,"name":"Certus AI","slug":"certus-ai","url":"https://www.certus-ai.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/4913536f9defe2e375acb9a499aa2ac443e9dc95.png","batch":"Summer 2025","industry":"B2B","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","SaaS","B2B","Restaurant Tech","AI"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30759"}}