The state of the restaurant phone in Australia, 2026

The headline finding: 74% of Australians say they’re comfortable with restaurants using AI to handle reservations. That single number, from SevenRooms’ 2025 survey of 1,000 Australian consumers, reframes the question every operator asks about phone automation. It isn’t “will diners accept it” — most already have. It’s “is my phone actually being answered”.

What this report is, and isn’t

This is a short synthesis of published Australian industry data about the restaurant phone and how people want to reach a venue. The figures are other people’s — SevenRooms surveyed consumers and operators; CommBank iQ measured real card spending — and each is linked in the Sources below so you can check it yourself. We haven’t run our own survey, and we don’t quote our own call data here, because aggregate call data belongs to the venues who generate it. Where a number is directional rather than precise, we say so.

Finding 1 — Australians are ready for AI on the phone

The comfort is not marginal. In the SevenRooms survey, 74% of Australian consumers were comfortable with restaurants using AI for the reservation process, and about 1 in 3 operators reported already using AI in customer service and data analytics.

Source: SevenRooms 2025 Australia Restaurant Industry Trends Report.

The gap between those two numbers is the opportunity: diner acceptance is running ahead of operator adoption.

Finding 2 — Eating-out demand is growing, so the phone rings more

More covers means more calls. CommBank iQ’s 2026 Table to Turnover report, drawn from the transactions of more than seven million Australians, put year-on-year spending growth on cafes, restaurants and catering at +6.6% to January 2026 — more than double supermarket and grocery growth.

Source: CommBank iQ 2026 Table to Turnover. Note the nuance: within eating-out, cafés have been outpacing sit-down restaurants — so this is rising demand, not a uniform boom. Either way, the phone is busier.

Finding 3 — Diners want a text back

Reaching a venue is only half the loop; the confirmation is the other half. 47% of consumers said they prefer getting texts from restaurants, especially for time-sensitive messages and reservation updates. A phone system that can text a confirmation or a reminder is meeting a stated preference, not inventing one.

Finding 4 — The phone competes with the floor at exactly the wrong time

CommBank iQ’s trading data shows how concentrated demand is: the evening window (6–10pm) accounts for roughly 32% of daily food trade and the lunch window (12–2pm) about 22%. Those peaks are when every pair of hands is already committed — and when the phone is most likely to ring out. The busier the service, the more calls a venue misses, which is the quiet leak automation is built to close.

What operators should do

• Assume acceptance, then check your answer rate. With 74% of diners comfortable with AI, the risk isn’t diner backlash — it’s the calls ringing out at 7:30pm that you never hear.
• Close the loop with a text. Nearly half of diners want time-sensitive updates by text; a confirmation SMS is low effort and expected.
• Cover the peaks first. If you automate nothing else, cover the lunch and dinner windows when the phone and the floor compete hardest.

To size the leak for your own venue with your own numbers, use the method in what missed phone calls really cost your restaurant. To see how BitePerk answers the phone, read the VoxTable page or book a demo.