heytruffle, the Fort Lauderdale-based managed phone service formerly known as RestoHost, has closed a new funding round from New York venture firm Preface Ventures and is expanding its AI concierge platform to restaurant groups across the United States. The announcement also includes a rebrand, new order-taking capabilities for pickup and delivery, and a fresh integration with OpenTable.
How the Model Works
Unlike self-serve voice AI tools that hand configuration work to the operator, heytruffle operates as a fully managed service. Each restaurant client receives a custom AI concierge trained on that location's menu, tone, policies, and service workflows—not a generic assistant shared across every account. A human team reviews calls weekly and refines the system, and callers who need a live person are transferred to restaurant staff. The concierge runs in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German, addressing the multilingual demands of U.S. hospitality operations.
Lucas Espina, founder and CEO of heytruffle, framed the pitch around operational relief rather than automation for its own sake. "Restaurants do not need another piece of software to manage," Espina said. "They need the phone handled with the same care they give the guests in the dining room. This funding lets us bring that to more restaurant groups."
Volume at Scale
Rreal Tacos, a 12-location group based in Georgia, offers a concrete look at what the service handles. heytruffle processes more than 20,000 calls a month across those locations. In a typical month, the concierge supported the seating of 14,085 guests, capturing reservation demand during peak hours when a fully booked host stand could not always respond in time.
That throughput speaks directly to a pressure point documented in the National Restaurant Association's 2025 State of the Industry report, which found that many full-service operators say they lack sufficient staff to meet existing demand. When dining rooms run short-handed, incoming calls are frequently the first channel to go unanswered—and reservations, large-party inquiries, and catering leads represent some of the highest-value demand a restaurant receives. The argument for restaurant technology coverage built around the phone channel is straightforward: a missed call in a peak-hour rush can mean a lost booking that never comes back.
New Capabilities for Operators
The funding announcement expands what the concierge can manage. Order-taking for pickup and delivery joins the platform's existing coverage of reservations, catering, and private events, giving restaurant groups a single managed channel for a wider share of inbound demand. The service is designed to plug into existing POS and reservation systems to minimize the onboarding burden on already-stretched teams.
The new OpenTable integration is particularly relevant for operators already on that platform. Rather than running a parallel booking workflow, the heytruffle concierge can manage reservations directly inside OpenTable, keeping front-of-house systems consolidated. For multi-location groups weighing hospitality operations efficiency, that kind of stack compatibility typically lowers the friction of adoption.
Preface Ventures' backing will fund expansion to additional restaurant groups nationwide. The rebrand from RestoHost to heytruffle signals a sharper positioning around the hospitality-first design philosophy the company has built its product around—a meaningful distinction as voice AI competition in foodservice intensifies and operators grow more selective about which technology partners actually reduce workload rather than add to it.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
