Restaurants lose bookings because nobody can answer the phone during service. Staff get pulled off the floor to handle repetitive questions, customer emails pile up until after the shift, and enquiries that come in at the wrong moment simply get missed.
Arran Campolucci-Bordi, founder of Ayra and operator of Liverpool institution Casa Italia, is building an AI solution around exactly that problem: a restaurant-trained assistant that can communicate with customers 24/7, understand the individual business and answer questions without adding more work for the team.
Arran joins Dan to explore what AI can actually do for restaurants beyond the hype — from handling guest communication and reservations to analysing margins, labour, menus and customer behaviour. They discuss why AI becomes dramatically more useful once it understands your specific business, how operators are already using ChatGPT and Claude to solve real-world restaurant problems, and where technology should never replace hospitality.
The conversation also digs into the brutal economics facing restaurants, VAT, marketing and PR, before Arran shares the remarkable 50-year story of Casa Italia, the importance of consistency, great service and why Liverpool remains unlike anywhere else.
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:04 What Is AI Actually Good For?
00:11:07 Can AI Make Hospitality More Human?
00:14:07 Why Restaurants Shouldn’t Pay for Reservations
00:16:08 AI-Powered Personalised Restaurant Marketing
00:22:15 The Restaurant Margin Problem
00:25:35 Let AI Analyse Your Restaurant
00:29:13 Can ChatGPT Fix Your Menu?
00:34:57 Systemising the Magic of Hospitality
00:42:50 Turning Gut Instinct Into Data
00:50:05 Could AI Eventually Run Your Business?
00:57:16 Why Restaurant VAT Is “The Problem”
01:03:36 A Marketing Campaign Restaurants Can Learn From
01:05:07 Why Press Still Beats Influencers
01:10:00 Growing Up Inside Casa Italia
01:14:13 Why Casa Italia Never Changed Its Menu
01:21:18 Three Ingredients of a Great Restaurant
01:24:09 Why Service Matters More Than Food
01:27:02 What Makes Liverpool Different?
01:31:08 How Liverpool Reinvented Itself
01:37:10 Why The Beatles Changed Everything Ayra Edit RSS 2
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This episode was edited by: G.Thomas Craig (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gthomascraig/)
Ayra is your external front of house. An artificially intelligent communications manager that lives on your website and across your social channels, chatting and responding to customers 24/7 with warmth and personality.
She's trained on your business and built to act. Taking the reservation, holding the card, sending the reminder, recovering the lost booking. Instantly and autonomously.
click the link to learn more.
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