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A restaurant group that grows without adding people.

AI staff for the jobs a restaurant group would otherwise hire for: marketing, reservations, guest messages, reviews, the weekly read across venues. You approve from your phone. They do the work.

Prepared forAudace Restaurants
Prepared byNode AI
Introduction
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In the last couple of years, something changed in how companies run.

Until now
Growth meant hiring.
Filling tables, posting for every venue, answering every call and review, reading the numbers. Each of those meant another person on the payroll, or a job nobody got to.
Now
The output of a larger team, without adding a single person.
Software takes the roles. Your team keeps the taste, the relationships and the final say.

We know, because we run this way ourselves. We are two founders. Every new job would normally have meant a new hire, so we built the role instead: finding leads, making content, running client work, keeping the books. When it worked for us, we started doing it for other companies.

The change
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Running a restaurant group, as it actually feels.

Some of this will sound familiar. None of it is anyone’s whole job.

Every hire
You hire for the floor
Nobody is hired to answer the phone, write the posts or reply to reviews. Those jobs fall to whoever is left at the end of the night, which is usually you.
Eight o’clock
The phone rings and the floor is full
Whoever is closest picks up, or nobody does. The caller books somewhere else and never says so.
Saturday
A table of six, set, and nobody came
No reminder went out, no deposit was taken, and the couple you turned away at the door is eating next door.
Two days later
The review you saw too late
It sat in one of six inboxes while everyone who looked you up read it first.
Most weeks
Marketing is the job with no deadline
So it loses to everything that has one. It happens in bursts, when someone has an evening, and stops when service gets busy.
Tuesday
A quiet room and nothing to pull
The guests who came last month would come back if someone told them to. Nobody has their number in one place.

The people who could do this work are on the floor. That is where they should be.

The situation
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Fewer diners, deciding on their phones, before they ever call.

What the numbers say about Hong Kong dining in 2026.

The roomRestaurant receipts in the first quarter were still 7.2% below 2018, and up only 1.1% on last year. Fourteen decades-old restaurants closed in the first four months of the year.
NorthA dinner in Shenzhen costs a third of the Hong Kong price, and nine in ten holiday travellers head that way. The diners who stay want a reason, every week.
How they decide1.13 million Hong Kong users on Xiaohongshu, up 50% in a year; seven in ten search before they book. Mainland guests, 76% of visitors, plan their tables there. Instagram carries the rest.
The callFull-service restaurants still miss about one call in eleven, almost all during service, and most callers never try again.
What it meansEvery venue is competing for fewer, more deliberate diners, who decide on their phones before they call.The marketing has to run every week in every language your guests speak, and the phone has to be answered when the floor cannot.
The market
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Where the friction is, and what it costs.

Six places where the work piles up in a restaurant group, and where AI staff take it off the floor.

01
Every hire is for the floor
Hiring is the industry’s top problem after inflation; turnover runs above one in five and each hire costs weeks to train. The admin jobs around the floor never get a person at all.
Every department
02
The phone during service
Full-service restaurants miss about one call in eleven, almost all at exactly the hours people book. Most callers never try twice.
Reservations
03
No-shows
Measured across four million bookings: a delivered reminder cuts no-shows by a sixth, a deposit cuts them to a third. Most venues send neither, because nobody has the time.
Reservations
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Messages in six inboxes
Google, OpenRice, Instagram, WhatsApp, the booking app, email. Reviews and questions answered late, or by whoever had a minute, in whatever voice.
Guest communication
05
Marketing in bursts
A launch, a press moment, then silence. Each pause means the next post reaches fewer people, and the feed stops matching the room.
Marketing
06
Nobody follows up after the visit
The guest who loved it is never asked for a review and never hears about the new menu. Tuesdays stay quiet.
Repeat guests
The friction
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Four departments, one role at a time.

A restaurant group as teams of AI staff. None of them adds a person to the floor; each one takes a job off it. We start with marketing, where the output is most visible, and add the next department when the first has earned it.

Marketing
Ready today
Every venue, every week
Posts, ads, articles and listings for each venue, in its own voice and every language your guests speak. Menus and hours kept true on Google, Maps and the booking apps. Named when someone asks an assistant where to eat. Three teams, nine roles, built in advance.
Reservations
Scoped with you
Every call answered, every table confirmed
A missed call gets a WhatsApp message within the minute, and the guest books in the chat. Every booking confirmed, reminded the day before, a deposit taken for large tables, a released table refilled from the waitlist. Written into your booking system.
Guest communication
Scoped with you
One inbox, one voice
Reviews, DMs and questions from every platform answered within the hour, in the venue’s voice. The ones that need a manager reach one, with the context attached. Happy guests asked for a review at the right moment.
Repeat guests
Scoped with you
After the visit
The message that brings a guest back: a new menu, a quiet Tuesday, a table on their birthday. Timed to when they last came, from one list of guests across every venue.

Each box is a role you would otherwise hire for. Same model, same terms, in every department.

The solution
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How one of these employees works.

Once
It learns your venues
Every menu, each venue’s voice, what you can say, who you compete with, what has worked. Explained once, never again.
Every day
It does its job
Research, writing, design, replies, bookings, reporting. On a schedule, without being asked.
You
You approve from your phone
Release it, change it, or reject it. A few minutes a day. Nothing goes out without you.
Always
It keeps what it learns
Every yes, every no with a reason, every result goes back in. It gets better at your group, not worse.

We call these AI agents. Each one has a job, a schedule and a budget, like a member of staff. We direct them, you approve, and everything they learn about your venues is yours from day one.

How it works
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Where we start: marketing, for every venue.

The department we have built in advance. Three teams, nine roles, live for every venue by day thirty.

You
Set direction, approve what goes out
Content team
What you publish
Paid media team
What you pay for
Search and discovery team
How diners find you
Content StrategistPlans what goes out, per venue, and when
Content ProducerWrites, designs and edits it
Social Media ManagerSchedules, publishes, replies
Creative StrategistDecides and makes the ads
Campaign ManagerLaunches, moves budget to the quiet venue, stops losers
Ads AnalystChecks the numbers, reports weekly
SEO SpecialistKeeps Google, Maps and every listing true
Content WriterPages and articles worth finding
AI Visibility SpecialistGets you named when someone asks an assistant where to eat
Brand Reviewer checks every piece against the rules you approved, per venue and per platform
Where we start
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What you would do instead.

What most groups do
HireMonths to find and train. One marketing manager expected to cover every venue, paid whether the work is there or not. What they learn leaves with them.
AgencyA slice of someone’s attention, on the scope in the contract. The fee grows with every new venue. Their knowledge of you resets when the account manager changes.
Chat windowType everything in, get something average, fix it yourself. Tomorrow it remembers nothing.
A digital workforce
01Several roles, for about the budget of one junior hireThe budget you would set aside for one employee now covers a team, for every venue.
02Onboarded like a new hire, onceEvery menu, every venue, how you talk, what you can say, who you compete with.
03Works every day. Nobody has to askA chat waits for you. A team has a job and gets on with it, during service too.

Which job would you fill tomorrow if hiring cost nothing?

The alternatives
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How it starts.

Week one
Every venue, in one place
You brief us once. Menus, venues, voices, rules. We turn it into the knowledge every role works from, and it is yours from day one.
Week two
The first role goes live
Real posts for one venue in your approval queue. Nothing goes out until you say yes.
Day thirty
Marketing is running for every venue
One role at a time. Every role in the plan is live by day thirty.
After that
Reservations, then guest communication
Pause any role at any time. As trust builds, you decide how much runs without review, and what we take on next.
How it starts
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What happens next.

A thirty-minute call. Nothing to prepare, nothing to install.

01
You tell us where the work piles up
How many venues, which channels run, who answers the phone at eight on a Friday, what the next opening looks like.
02
We come back with the roles
Which department first, which roles we would fill, what each one produces every week for each venue, and what stays with your team.
03
Then the price, the terms, the start date
Stated plainly, once we know what the work is. Then you decide.

Who you would be talking to. Cristoforo Perrone, founder, Node AI · cristoforo@nodeagency.ai

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