Sadie Alternatives for Restaurants
Sadie answers the phone as an AI receptionist and takes messages. Six alternatives, and how to tell whether your calls want a message or a ticket.
On this page
The server is four steps from the pass when the phone rings. The caller wants to know whether the lot behind the building is free after six. She answers it, the two plates under the heat lamp wait, and the table that ordered them waits with them.
Sadie sells the fix for that scene, and the framing is honest. It is an AI receptionist for restaurants: hours, location, policies, reservation requests and messages, priced by quote, with a published ceiling of 20 concurrent calls (checked October 2026).
The question is narrower than AI or no AI. It is whether the call that pulled her off the floor deserved ninety seconds of her wage, or whether it was an order.
TL;DR
- Sadie is an AI receptionist for restaurants, sold on a quote, with a published ceiling of 20 concurrent calls (October 2026).
- It does not advertise secure payment, so a deposit or a catering card is a question to ask, not a feature to assume.
- Six alternatives, and they split on whether the call should end as a message somebody reads or a ticket the kitchen cooks.
- 750 connected minutes is roughly 300 calls at two and a half minutes, which is Kovo Starter at $99, about 33 cents an answered call (plans).
- Ask each vendor how long a message sits before a person works it, then use the 14 free days.
Who should leave Sadie, and who should stay
Stay if interruption is the cost you are trying to remove. Labor runs 25% to 36% of revenue depending on format, per the National Restaurant Association, and a server answering a parking question is that line item in motion while the food dies under a lamp.
Stay too if the calls are genuinely guest questions. Directions, dress code, whether the patio is heated, whether the private room has a projector: a receptionist handles those well, and no order-taking product does that job better.
Leave when the caller's next sentence is food. Industry estimates put around 60% of missed restaurant calls in the order-or-book bucket, and a message that gets worked at nine in the evening is a ticket you lost at seven.
Leave too if the message path has no owner. A message is only as good as the person who reads it, and if nobody is assigned to that queue on a Friday, the receptionist is filing requests into a drawer.
The alternatives at a glance
What each vendor published in October 2026. Confirm on their own page before signing, and price at your call volume rather than the entry tier.
| Option | Best for | Published price | Order on the call | POS path | Card on the call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sadie | Reception and messages | Quote | No | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not advertised |
| Hostie | Reservations and one inbox | $199 base; $399 with order taking | On the $399 tier | OpenTable, Resy, Toast, Square | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Maple | Reservation-heavy independents | Quote | Basic order handling | OpenTable documented; order path via middleware | Not advertised |
| Slang.ai | Reservation-first rooms | $450–$600/mo per location | Redirects to online ordering | OpenTable for reservations | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Kovo | Takeout phone lines | $99/mo or $299/mo | Yes, with modifiers | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | Card the shop already holds, charged during the call; link for a first-timer |
| Loman | Closing the whole call | From $199/mo, no per-minute fees | Yes, with modifiers | Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, SkyTab, Aloha, Olo | Yes, charged during the call |
| Reachify | POS-first order routing | Quote | Yes, with a text fallback | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
Kovo is the row that belongs to us, and this page says so. The rest is what each vendor publishes, and a blank cell is one to fill in writing.
Two rows carry a number you can divide. Kovo Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, which is 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average, or 33 cents a call. On Unlimited, $299 buys 5,000 minutes and the per-call cost falls to 15 cents. Sadie's quote needs the same division before the two figures mean anything at all.
The six options, and what each one costs you
Hostie
Hostie puts calls, texts and email in one inbox and handles reservation requests, event inquiries and takeout requests, with OpenTable, Resy, Toast and Square documented. Order taking is published on the $399 tier rather than the $199 base (October 2026).
The hand-off is the weak point. Hostie solves the interruption and shortens the queue, but somebody still opens the message. The Hostie alternatives page follows that thread further.
Maple
Maple is reservation-aware phone AI with a documented OpenTable integration and order handling the vendor describes as basic. It publishes a 92% resolution rate for standard call types and coverage across 1,000+ locations, both vendor figures rather than audits.
Its centre of gravity is the reservation book. A reservation product is a good receptionist and a basic order line, which is fine if your calls are tables and a problem if they are pizzas.
Slang.ai
Slang.ai answers questions, takes reservation requests and sends callers who want to order to online ordering. The conversational quality is the reason it is shortlisted so often, and it is published at $450 to $600 a month per location for Superhost (October 2026).
Price against job is the check here. At that number, a redirect to a website is an expensive way to take a parking question, and a caller with a pizza order is being handed a second step. The Slang.ai alternatives page says what replaces it.
Kovo
Kovo answers the call, takes the order in the caller's words, reads it back, and lands the ticket in Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson Server Direct Print or Star CloudPRNT printer. Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, Unlimited is $299 for 5,000, and the cap forwards calls to your own line instead of charging an overage.
The obvious limit is that it is not a receptionist. It books tables only in its own book rather than in a platform, it charges a card the shop already holds rather than one read out on the call, and the order limit is the shop's own: 10 items in total and 8 of one item by default, changeable, with an optional value limit. The Kovo vs Sadie comparison puts the two side by side.
Loman
Loman closes the call: order taken with modifiers, card charged during the conversation, ticket written into a POS list that includes Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, SkyTab, Aloha and Olo. It publishes from $199 a month per location with no per-minute fees (October 2026).
Those claims need a reference. Its accuracy and revenue figures are vendor numbers, operator-reported rather than audited, and at a low volume a flat fee pays for capacity you never use. Ask for a reference shop you can call.
Reachify
Reachify is phone ordering that pushes the order into the POS rather than leaving it as a message, with a text link as the fallback. For a shop whose fear is an order living in a dashboard nobody opens, that is the right instinct, and it is the opposite of a message queue.
Which half arrives by text is the thing to pin down. Ask which parts of an order close on the call and which come as a link, because the second kind is a message with better branding.
What a replacement has to prove in ten minutes
Call the shortlist from a cell phone, on a live line, and time the answers rather than reading the dashboard tour.
- Place an order with two modifiers and a substitution, then ask for the total and listen to the read-back.
- Ask where the ticket landed and look at it on your own POS. A summary by email is not a ticket.
- Ask the payment question directly: can a caller read out a new card, or does payment need something already on file?
- Ask how long a message sits before a person works it, and ask to see timestamps from a live account rather than an average.
- Ask what happens on the call after the concurrency limit.
That last question is worth more than it sounds. Sadie publishes a ceiling of 20 concurrent calls, which is rare honesty and a useful benchmark to hold the others to. If the answer on the next demo is a busy tone, that is a number worth knowing before a Friday.
Who should keep paying for reception
Kovo is the wrong product when the phone is a concierge line, and better to say so here than to find out in service.
It books tables in its own book, not in OpenTable or Resy, so a shop whose book is a platform keeps the platform. A card the shop already holds is charged on the line and a first-time caller gets a link, but a card number is never read into the call. It sells one store per subscription, so a second location is a second line, menu and subscription. And a 40-item catering order sits above the default limit: the owner raises the limit, or turns on large-party routing so the call rings the handset.
Sadie is the wrong product in one case, and this page is written for it: the calls include real orders, and nobody has been assigned to the message queue. The comparison hub lists the vendor pairs where that gets argued properly.
FAQ
Why would a restaurant replace Sadie?
The usual reason is that the calls it handles need to end in a ticket rather than a message. Sadie is framed as a receptionist: hours, location, policies, reservation requests and message taking. That is the right job when interruption is the cost, and the wrong one when an order sits in a queue until somebody has a free hand. Count the messages that waited more than 60 minutes on one Friday and you have the size of the problem.
Is there a published Sadie price?
No per-location price was published as of October 2026; Sadie is sold on a quote. What it does publish, unusually, is a ceiling of 20 concurrent calls, which most vendors leave out. Ask for the monthly figure at your call volume in writing, per location, with any per-minute or per-call component itemised, then compare it with $99 and $299.
What should I test in the first ten minutes of a replacement demo?
Place an order with two modifiers and a substitution, ask for the total, then ask where the ticket landed. Do the same call at 6:55 on a Saturday if you can, because a demo run at 2 p.m. is a demo of an idle system. Ten minutes of that tells you more than an hour of dashboard.
Do these alternatives take a card, or take a message?
It splits. Loman documents charging any card during the call. Kovo charges a card the shop already holds while the caller is still on the line, and texts a Stripe Checkout link to a first-time caller with the line held open, on plans at $99 and $299. Sadie does not advertise secure payment, so a deposit or a catering card is a question to ask rather than a feature to assume.
How much of a server's shift goes to the phone?
Too much of it to measure by feel. Labor runs 25% to 36% of revenue across restaurant formats, according to the National Restaurant Association, and a call handled by a server is paid for out of that line while the plates wait. Count answered calls on one Friday, multiply by the minutes each took, and you have the number to compare with a quote.
Final Thoughts
The decision is about what a call is worth. If it is a question and the answer is information, buy the receptionist: Sadie handles that, and it publishes the one number most vendors hide.
If it is an order, buy a product whose output is a ticket. Kovo is the cheap version at $99 or $299, charging a card it already holds and carrying the shop's own order limit, and Loman is the version that captures any card on the call from $199 (published pricing, October 2026).
Count one Friday's calls, divide the minutes, and multiply by what each answered call is worth to you. Then take a test call with your own menu on the shortlist winner and keep the receptionist question for the calls that are genuinely information.