heytruffle, formerly known as RestoHost, has raised new funding from Preface Ventures. The announcement coincided with the company’s rebrand from RestoHost to heytruffle, a shift that reflects the company’s roots in running restaurants and its focus on protecting the guest experience over the phone. heytruffle plans to use the funding to expand its service across the United States.
heytruffle is a fully managed AI phone concierge for multi-location restaurant groups. Rather than selling a self-serve automation tool, the company trains a custom AI concierge for each restaurant and pairs it with a human team that reviews calls and refines performance every week. The concierge handles reservations, catering, private events, and guest questions, and routes callers to staff when a person is needed. The company frames the model as a way to give restaurant teams back the time to focus on the people in front of them, rather than replacing employees outright.
Rreal Tacos, a 12-location group in Georgia, uses heytruffle across all of its restaurants, with the service handling more than 20,000 calls a month. In a typical month, the platform has supported the seating of more than 14,000 guests, capturing demand during peak hours that a busy host stand could not always reach on its own.
As part of the announcement, heytruffle added order-taking for pickup and delivery to what its concierge can handle, and introduced an integration with OpenTable that lets the concierge manage reservations within a platform many restaurants already use. The company said its service is designed to work alongside the systems restaurants already rely on, including their point-of-sale and reservation tools, rather than requiring operators to adopt new software. The concierge also operates in several languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German.
KEY QUOTE:
“Restaurants do not need another piece of software to manage. They need the phone handled with the same care they give the guests in the room. This funding lets us bring that to more restaurant groups.”
Lucas Espina, Founder and CEO, heytruffle
