Best AI Order Taking for Restaurants
Six services that take a restaurant order by phone, ranked on price, owner-set limits, payment, and the POS path. Kovo scores 93, Loman closes any card.
On this page
The best order-taking product for a restaurant is the service whose call ends with a ticket the kitchen can cook from. On the seven criteria below that is Kovo at 93/100: $99 for 750 connected minutes, the ticket written to Toast, Square, Clover, or Olo, and a card the shop already holds charged while the caller is still on the line. Loman is second at 80/100, and it wins the payment row outright.
Kovo is ours, so every other row comes from the vendor's own published pages, checked in October 2026. Every quote-based price here is a blank that only a sales call fills in.
A twelve-line transcript is not an order. One came back clean last month — large pie, half mushroom, extra cheese, two ranch, pickup at 7:20. The kitchen never saw it, because it landed in an inbox nobody opened after the lunch shift. That ticket was worth $38. This page ranks the path from a ring to a ticket, not the voice that answers the ring.
TL;DR:
- Kovo scores 93/100: $99 for 750 connected minutes, owner-set order limits, a ticket on the POS, and no overage at the cap.
- Loman scores 80 and wins the payment row — any card, captured inside the call — from $199 a month with no per-minute fees (published pricing, October 2026).
- Kea (57), Certus AI (57), VOICEplug AI (55), and Reachify (53) are quote-based, so the all-in number at your call volume has to be asked for in writing.
- At 900 four-minute calls a month, Kovo Unlimited is $299 against Loman's $199 flat, and the quoted vendors are unknown until they answer.
- Run one modifier order through each shortlisted vendor and ask for the kitchen ticket, not the transcript.
The rubric, and why these weights
We sell Kovo. The weights and the inputs are printed so the ranking can be checked.
Ranking phone agents by how good the voice sounds is unmeasurable, and every vendor on this page claims it anyway. Ranking them by what a restaurant actually pays for is checkable, so this is the table the ranking uses.
| Weight | Criterion | Why it decides |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | Price per answered call | The bill is the first objection |
| 20% | Reservations included, no platform fee | A table call is the highest-value call |
| 15% | Order limits the owner controls | One fixed cap does not fit four restaurant types |
| 15% | Payment that closes on the call | An unpaid ticket is a kitchen waiting |
| 10% | POS depth you actually run | A ticket that needs retyping is not an integration |
| 10% | Channels on one brain (phone, chat) | Two menus is two truths |
| 5% | Setup without a scheduled onboarding | Speed to first call |
Each vendor is scored 1 to 5 on every row against public information checked in October 2026, then weighted to a total out of 100. A competitor can win a row and still lose the total, because price per answered call carries a quarter of the weight on its own.
The ranking
| # | Product | Score | Price | Reservations | Card on the call | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kovo | 93 | $99 / $299 | Own book, included | Known card charged on the line; link for a first-timer | A takeout line that wants the lowest cost per answered order |
| 2 | Loman | 80 | From $199 | OpenTable write-back | Any card, captured in the call | A shop where every caller has to pay before they hang up |
| 3 | Kea | 57 | Quote | Not publicly listed | Not publicly documented | A restaurant-specific build bought on a quote |
| 4 | Certus AI | 57 | Quote | Documented, with orders | Not publicly documented | Stores whose callers open in Spanish |
| 5 | VOICEplug AI | 55 | Quote | Not publicly listed | Stored methods published; new cards to confirm | Pizza and QSR groups running more than one lane |
| 6 | Reachify | 53 | Quote | Not publicly listed | Confirm on the demo | A shop already committed to a POS-first workflow |
Kovo takes price, owner-set limits, the included book, and chat. Loman takes payment and ties the POS row, which is why it is second rather than sixth. The four quote-based products are narrower scopes at prices you cannot read until somebody quotes them.
Kovo — 93/100
Kovo is ours: it answers the phone, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back before it is placed, and writes the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer.
$99 buys 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls, or $299 buys 5,000, with no overage: at the cap, calls forward to your own phone. A card the shop already holds is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a link. The order limits belong to the owner — 10 items and 8 of one item by default, a value limit, zero to switch one off.
Loman — 80/100
Loman closes the whole call: order with modifiers, card captured inside the conversation, reservations, and a ticket into one of nine published POS integrations. It starts at $199 a month per location with no per-minute fees (published pricing, October 2026).
If the caller has never ordered before and has to be charged before they hang up, Loman is the product on this page that does it. Its published POS list is also the widest here. The limit is the evidence: the 99.6% order accuracy it publishes is a vendor claim, operator-reported and not audited, so ask for a reference in your format. Kovo vs Loman has the row-by-row.
Kea — 57/100
Kea is restaurant voice AI with order taking and a restaurant-specific build, sold on a quote rather than a plan.
That shape suits a mid-volume shop that wants the sales conversation to be about its own menu, and a custom build is where a quote can beat a published tier. The limit is comparison: a quote hides the monthly number at your volume and does not publish which POS systems it writes to. The two things you need beside $99 and $199 arrive only in writing. Ask for both before a demo. Kea alternatives shows how the quote usually breaks apart.
Certus AI — 57/100
Certus AI handles orders, deliveries, reservations, upselling, and complaints in English, Spanish, and French, per its own description, and its public positioning points at multi-unit groups and drive-thru operations.
If a real share of your calls opens in Spanish, that is a product decision rather than a checkbox, and no other vendor on this page publishes it. The limit is time to live: Certus publicly describes roughly five days to set up per deployment, longer than the under-24-hours claim elsewhere in the category. Book the cutover for a quiet week, and confirm POS depth store by store.
VOICEplug AI — 55/100
VOICEplug AI sells voice ordering across phone, drive-thru, kiosk, and pizza-specific channels, on a quote.
Breadth is why pizza and quick-service groups shortlist it: one vendor for every surface an order arrives on, with lane hardware as part of the scope. The limit is the payment path. It publishes stored payment methods, and whether a brand-new card can be taken inside a call is a question for the demo. A shop whose callers are mostly first-timers should ask it before the hardware question. VOICEplug AI alternatives goes further.
Reachify — 53/100
Reachify is built around getting the order into the POS instead of leaving it as a message, with POS push and text-link fallbacks, sold on a quote.
For a shop whose current failure is orders arriving as a text the counter re-keys, that framing matches the problem exactly, and it is the reason it makes a six-product list at 53. The limit is what a fallback means on a live line: part of the order can finish by text, which is one more place for a hungry caller to stop. Ask which items close inside the call and watch where the modifier order below stalls.
The test call
One call per vendor, the same order each time, on a live line. Twenty minutes of this is worth more than any demo script.
- A plain item. Does it reach the printer or the POS ticket list?
- An item with two modifiers. Do they land in the right groups, or arrive as free text?
- Something you sold out this morning. Is it still offered?
- An order past your limit. Routed to your handset, refused with a reason, or truncated?
- A card order from a number that has paid before. Is the card charged on the line, or does the ticket wait for a link?
Write the answers down while the call is fresh, then set the software price against the value of the calls you are already missing.
FAQ
What is the best AI order taking for a restaurant?
The one whose call ends with a ticket on the POS your kitchen already reads. On the rubric above that is Kovo at 93/100: $99 for 750 connected minutes, the ticket written to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer, and the order limits set by the owner. Loman scores 80 and is the pick when a caller you have never served has to pay with a card inside the call, because it captures any card on the line while Kovo charges a card the shop already holds and links a first-time caller.
What is the difference between AI answering and AI order taking?
About one step, and it is the expensive one. Answering captures the intent: an hours question, a reservation request, a note that someone wants two pizzas. Order taking captures items, modifiers, a price, a payment path, and a destination for the ticket. A vendor that cannot show you the kitchen ticket has sold you the first thing at the price of the second, which is why the first check on this page is a printed ticket and not a transcript.
Which of these takes a card during the call?
Loman documents capturing any card inside the call, including a first-time caller's, and the vendor is the source for that. Kovo charges a card the shop already holds off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open; paying it vaults the card for the next call. No card number is spoken, recorded, or sent to a model either way. Kea, Reachify, VOICEplug, and Certus do not publicly document in-call capture, so ask on a live demo.
How much does AI order taking cost at 900 calls a month?
At four-minute calls, 900 calls is 3,600 connected minutes: Kovo Unlimited is $299 with no overage, and Loman publishes from $199 a month with no per-minute fees (published pricing, October 2026). At 300 short calls, Kovo Starter is $99 against Loman's $199. Kea, Reachify, VOICEplug, and Certus sell on a quote, so ask for the monthly number at your own volume in writing, with the per-location, per-minute, and setup lines separated.
Will any of these take a large catering order?
Not by default on this list. Kovo's limit is the shop's: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, both editable, plus an optional order-value limit, and above one the call rings your handset if you turned on large-party routing. No product here publishes a catering workflow with a prep schedule and a delivery window, so keep a person on that line and let the agent finish the $38 tickets it can ticket correctly.
Final Thoughts
The decision is not which voice sounds most human. It is what the call leaves behind: a paid ticket, a printed ticket, or a note somebody works later.
On the rubric above the answer is Kovo at 93/100 — $99 for 750 minutes, limits you set, a book included, and a card charged while the caller is still talking. Loman is the answer to a different question, any card in any call, and the table says so. Put the five-call test to your own menu and score the rows yourself. Take a test call.