Kovo vs Sadie: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
Sadie is an AI receptionist on a quote. Kovo is an order line from $99. The difference is where the call stops and whether a ticket reaches the kitchen.
On this page
The pad by the register is where takeout orders go to die. Someone answers mid-service, writes "party of 9, Saturday, one gluten-free", tears the sheet, and slides it under the till. The kitchen never sees it. The caller never gets a callback.
A missed restaurant call is estimated at $35 to $85 in lost ticket, and research frequently attributed to BIA/Kelsey has found that roughly 85% of callers do not try again. A QSR Magazine analysis puts the average restaurant at around 150 missed calls a month, so at $35 to $85 a call that is $5,250 to $12,750 walking out the door.
The gap between answering the phone and closing what the caller wanted is the entire Kovo versus Sadie question. One product is built to turn the call into a ticket; the other is built to catch the message.
TL;DR
- Kovo is an order line with a book: it takes the order, reads it back, tickets it to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a printer, and takes a table in its own book from $99 a month.
- At 900 calls a month of two and a half minutes, Kovo Unlimited is $299, a call under 10 seconds is never billed, and at the cap the call forwards to your own phone rather than billing an overage.
- Kovo charges a card the shop already holds while the caller is on the line, and texts a Stripe link to a first-time caller with the line held open, so nobody hangs up to pay.
- Sadie is an AI receptionist for restaurants: hours, location, policies, reservation requests, and message taking, sold on a quote, with a published ceiling of 20 concurrent calls.
- Sadie does not publicly advertise secure payment processing, so ask for a written all-in price at your volume and for what happens to a deposit or catering card when the request comes in.
What Kovo is
Kovo is narrower on purpose. The call is answered, the order the caller speaks comes back to them as a read-back, and only then does anything print. What prints goes to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson or Star receipt printer.
The menu comes from the shop's own POS catalog or from a menu page, and it refreshes once a day in the background. The merge is three-way with tombstones, so an owner's edit to a price survives a source refresh while the source's change to everything else lands.
Plans are Starter at $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls, and Unlimited at $299 for 5,000 minutes. A call under 10 seconds is never billed, no single call bills past 12 minutes, and when the month's minutes run out, calls forward to your own phone instead of being answered.
Kovo books tables, in its own book: availability from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, one write per slot so two callers cannot take the same seat, and a confirmation text. A shop that runs OpenTable or Resy gets its reservation page read out and texted instead. On cards, the shop's held card is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open; no card number is spoken to the agent.
What Sadie is
Sadie sells itself as an AI receptionist for restaurants. It answers the phone, gives hours, location, and policy answers, takes reservation requests and messages, and gets the useful part to a person. That framing is the product, and it is honest.
The vendor publishes a ceiling of 20 concurrent calls, which is unusual: most of this category says "unlimited" and leaves it there. The price is quote-based, so the first thing you need from a sales call is a monthly number at your call volume, per location, in writing.
Two fields need filling first. The vendor does not publicly advertise secure payment processing, so ask what happens to a deposit or a catering card. And the path from an order to the kitchen is not publicly documented, so ask whether the order is written into your POS or handed over as a message.
The 30-second comparison
Published information, October 2026. Anything a vendor has not documented reads as a blank, and a blank is worth noticing.
| Kovo | Sadie | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes | Quote-based; no published number |
| What the call ends with | Order read back and ticketed; questions answered | Answer, message, or forwarded call |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Card handling | A card the shop already holds, charged on the line; link for a first-time caller | Not publicly advertised — confirm |
| Reservations | Kovo's own book; reads and texts an OpenTable or Resy page | Reservation requests handled; confirm depth |
| Setup | Self-serve; import menu, test call | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Concurrent calls | Not sold as a ceiling | 20, published by the vendor |
Two rows decide most of these deals, and neither is price. "What the call ends with" and "where the ticket lands" change what your staff does after the phone hangs up.
What a quote costs at your volume
Sadie's price is a quote, so the only useful arithmetic is the one you can put next to it. Take a shop answering 900 calls a month at a two-and-a-half-minute average.
- 900 calls × 2.5 minutes = 2,250 connected minutes, which fits Kovo Unlimited at $299.
- 300 calls × 2.5 minutes = 750 minutes, which is the $99 Starter plan exactly.
- 900 missed calls at $35 each = $31,500 a month of lost ticket, if that is your miss rate.
Kovo's pricing page shows that arithmetic directly. What it cannot show is Sadie's number, because there isn't one until you ask. Get three things in writing: the monthly price at 900 calls, whether it is per location, and any per-minute component.
Then put the two numbers against a recovered order. If the ticket averages $38 and the software difference is $100 a month, one answered Friday covers it. That does not make either product better, and the missed-call math is the same for both of them.
The decision, in three rows
No scoring rubric. Three shops, and the row that sounds like your phone is the answer.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Takeout or counter line where every call should end as a ticket in the kitchen, with modifiers, without retyping | Kovo | Order read-back and a ticket to the POS you already run, from $99 for 750 minutes |
| Full-service room where calls are reservations, hours, and "can you seat 9 on Saturday", and interruptions are what costs you the service | Sadie | Receptionist work and a message queue a person reads; Kovo's book is not the one your host runs |
| Deposits and catering inquiries where a card has to be handled before the date is held | Sadie, if it documents secure payment — confirm on a live call | Kovo charges a held card on the line and links a stranger; the limits are the shop's, defaulting to 10 items and 8 of one item |
The third row is decided by imagination rather than demonstration; neither marketing page answers it.
Two questions to ask on either demo
"It's 8 p.m. and the caller wants a table for nine on Saturday. Where does that request physically go?" On a receptionist it should land in a queue a person reads, with the number and the date attached. On Kovo it is a real booking, with a confirmation text, if the shop runs Kovo's own book; if the shop's book is OpenTable or Resy, the page is read out and texted and the table is not written.
"Halfway through, the caller swaps one pie to half mushroom. What is on the ticket?" That swap is where a night gets lost. A second read-back after an edit tells you the agent is rebuilding the order rather than narrating it. The Toast walkthrough shows what the printed output should look like on a ticket.
Ask both on a live call with your own menu. A demo menu has no half-and-half, no 86 board, and no caller who changes their mind four times.
Who should pick Sadie
Pick Sadie if the cost of your phone is the interruption rather than the ticket: a full-service room where the ringing pulls a server off the floor to write down a request.
Who should pick Kovo
Pick Kovo when the phone carries takeout and each call should end in the kitchen queue: pizza, deli, QSR, a counter shop with a noon line. Pick it if you want the order read back before it is placed, the modifiers nested the way the caller said them, and the ticket in Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or on a printer with nobody retyping anything.
Pick it too if you want the price to be the price. $99 for 750 connected minutes, $299 for 5,000, calls forwarding to your line at the cap. The Kovo vs Loman comparison covers the card question in full: Loman captures any card inside the call, while Kovo charges a card the shop already holds. The Kovo vs Hostie comparison covers the reservation-led case from a different angle, and the full comparison index covers the rest.
FAQ
Is Sadie or Kovo cheaper for a restaurant taking about 900 calls a month?
Nobody can answer that from published numbers, because Sadie sells on a quote and Kovo publishes its plans. Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, and 900 calls of two and a half minutes is 2,250 minutes, so the number is $299. Ask Sadie for a written monthly price at 900 calls, per location, with any per-minute or per-call component itemised before you compare the two.
Does either product take a card during the phone call?
Sadie does not publicly advertise secure payment processing, so ask what happens to a deposit or a catering card. Kovo charges the card the shop already holds, off-session, while the caller is on the line; a first-time caller gets a Stripe Checkout link by text with the line held open, and pays on Stripe's own page. No card number is spoken to the agent. Kovo bills connected minutes, $99 for 750 or $299 for 5,000, so ask both vendors to show the payment step on a live call.
Can Kovo handle reservation requests?
Yes, in its own book. Kovo takes a table from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, writes the slot once so two callers cannot take the same seat, and sends a confirmation text, on the same 750 connected minutes for $99. It writes nothing into OpenTable, Resy, or SevenRooms; a shop on one of those gets its page read out and texted. Sadie's reception work still fits a room where a person should read the request.
What happens to a large party order on each product?
The limit is the shop's: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, an optional order-value limit, and any of them switched off by setting zero. Above it, the call rings your handset if the owner enabled large-party routing and set one; otherwise the agent says the order is too large to send through and keeps taking what fits. A 40-person catering order still needs a person, and Sadie's message-taking path is aimed at exactly that call.
How long does setup take?
Kovo runs self-serve. A shop signs up, connects ordering, imports a menu, and takes a test call, which most do inside a day, and the 14-day trial asks for no card. Sadie's setup and implementation are not publicly listed, so ask for a written timeline, who does the menu work, and what the price is after the first location.
Final Thoughts
Sadie and Kovo both answer a ringing phone. Only one of them ends the call with a ticket on the line, and only one of them takes a table in its own book. If your problem is a server pulled off the floor to write down a reservation request, Sadie is the better tool and no order-ticket argument changes that.
If your problem is the pad by the register, run one call on each with your own menu: a half-and-half item, a correction, a read-back. Then look at what printed. Kovo answers from $99 for 750 connected minutes, and the ticket is the thing you are actually buying. Take a test call with your own menu.