Hostie: Reinventing Hospitality Through AI-Powered Guest Interactions

Today, the restaurant industry is central to American life, generating over $1.4 trillion annually and employing more than 15 million people nationwide. According to the National Restaurant Association, there are over one million restaurant outlets in the United States, serving billions of guests annually. 

In fact, the restaurant and foodservice industry is the nation’s second largest private employer, contributing to roughly 6% of the U.S’s real GDP, with these contributions spurring an additional 15.6% in real GDP through second-order and third-order effects. Of the 1M restaurants in the U.S, nearly 20% (180,000) are full-service restaurants. The below graphic from Mary Meeker’s recent AI trends report showcases just how fragmented the restaurant industry is: 

And behind every exceptional dining experience lies a hidden infrastructure: a delicate, interconnected web of reservations, communications, scheduling, and staffing—all essential, yet often inefficient. 

Each year, restaurants leave billions in potential revenue due to inefficient guest interactions, missed reservation opportunities, and pervasive labor shortages. Each missed call or improperly handled reservation also directly impacts customer satisfaction and potential 

Restaurants struggle significantly with guest communication across multiple channels—especially phone calls, reservations, private events, and takeout orders. This issue is exacerbated when restaurants operate with lean staffing models, leading to missed revenue opportunities, high labor stress, and poor customer experience.

A Founder Living the Problem

No one felt this more acutely than Randall Hom, founder of San Francisco’s Back to Back.  He was living the problem—answering phones mid-shift, fielding reservations between plating dishes. To solve it, he teamed up with Brendan Wood, an engineering leader from Uber, Eaze, and Lindy, to build Hostie—a purpose-built AI platform designed for restaurants by restaurant operators.

Their edge? Deep operational empathy paired with sharp technical execution.

Randall realized solving this pain point required two key elements: 

1. intimate knowledge of restaurant operations (which Randall already had as a restaurant operator) 
2. user-friendly, effective product design (a skill Randall honed while at Instacart leading their Ready Meals initiative). 

Randall’s co-founder, Brendan, with his engineering experience at Eaze, Uber, and Lindy rounds out the team's AI technical depth. 

A Call That Sparked an Investment

Andrew Brackin, Partner at Gradient Ventures, was running late to a dinner at Flour + Water. He called to update his reservation—and was greeted by a polished AI answering service that sounded… almost too good. Intrigued, he asked the host who built it. That led to a meeting with Randall and Brendan—and eventually, Gradient’s lead investment in Hostie’s $4M seed round.

We were introduced shortly after—and were immediately impressed.

Solving a Hospitality Crisis, Starting with Restaurants

Today, we see that effective guest interactions for restaurants revolve around three critical areas:

• Reservations: Efficient handling of bookings, changes, and confirmations.
• Real-Time Communication: Immediate responses to calls, texts, and corporate inquiries.
• Seamless Integration: Direct connection with reservation platforms (OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Yelp) and POS systems (Toast, Square).

Hostie’s AI-driven platform provides real-time optimization, interaction tracking, and streamlined guest communications, which reduces labor costs, decreases missed reservations, and improves guest satisfaction.

What Sets Hostie Apart

Hostie differentiates itself with an operator-driven approach emphasizing solutions tailored specifically to hospitality. Unlike broader AI voice platforms, the team at Hostie deeply understands restaurant operations. 

And rather than forcing restaurants into inflexible systems, Hostie’s platform empowers restaurant operators with easily accessible call transcripts, customizable and easy-to-use communication tools, and seamless guest interaction management. Hostie comes with a host of integrations into the most widely-used restaurant tools, ensuring usability for restaurants irrespective of their technology stack.

For instance, restaurants previously using competitors consistently cited issues such as inaccessible call recordings, inadequate customer support, and inflexible user experiences. Restaurants such as Bodega, La Mar, and Crew NYC (all early customers) have noted substantial improvements after switching to Hostie, highlighting ease-of-use, superior flexibility, and improved guest interactions. 

One early user—Crew NYC—shared that they booked a high-ticket private event on the spot that would've otherwise gone unanswered. Another, La Mar, saw a measurable spike in walk-in traffic after routing more calls through Hostie.

They demonstrated immediate value through customer anecdotes such as significantly increasing walk-in traffic and instantly capturing a private event booking that would otherwise be missed.

Collectively, these attributes position Hostie to solve restaurant communications challenges more effectively than both legacy hospitality providers and generalized AI-driven competitors.

A Vision for the Future

We backed Hostie because we believe Randall and Brendan are the right team to reimagine restaurant operations from the ground up. Hostie doesn’t replace the human touch—it protects it, by freeing up staff to focus on the guests in front of them. It gives restaurants the tools to scale service without compromising soul.

Through insightful conversations, their understanding of restaurant pain points was evident. Randall’s proven record with both Instacart and his successful restaurant, Back to Back, combined with Brendan’s extensive technical experience, strongly reinforced our conviction in their ability to transform restaurant operations.

With Hostie, restaurants don’t have to choose between running a tight ship and delivering magical guest moments. They can do both—at scale.

The future of hospitality is responsive, personalized, and intelligent.

And with Hostie, it’s already here.

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Want more info? You can read more about Hostie's $4M seed round here in the SF Standard.