Lincolnshire’s oldest thatched pub, The King’s Head in Tealby hands its phone to AI

A Market Rasen start-up has built an AI phone host that answers the phone for Lincolnshire's oldest thatched pub when staff can't and has booked about 165 tables that could have been missed in October alone.

After a trial from August, the finished version went live at The King’s Head in Tealby on September 29.

The AI, called Thomas, picks up when the team is busy with service or the pub is closed. It checks which tables are free and books them straight into the pub's diary.

In October, Thomas booked 165 covers over the phone, worth about £4,125 at the pub's average spend of £25 a head. These were calls the team couldn't get to. Across phone, Google and website bookings, the AI tool created by Porchlight Hospitality Ltd, took 430 covers for the pub that month, worth about £10,750, on top of the bookings the staff took themselves.

To date Thomas has booked 199 covers by phone, worth about £4,975. With Christmas party bookings starting, the pub's busiest weeks on the phone are just ahead.

Porchlight Hospitality is a new company based in Market Rasen. Its founder, Alistair McRae, managed The Olde Barn in Tealby and helped manage The Kings Head before building the system.

The idea came from a problem every busy pub knows: the phone rings in the middle of a packed Saturday service, nobody can answer it, and the caller books somewhere else. Thomas answers in the pub's own name, takes the booking, moves or cancels existing ones, and passes anything tricky, such as a large party or a supplier, back to the team with an alert on the bar tablet.

Callers talk to Thomas the way they would talk to staff - ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ included. The team had worried that older regulars wouldn't like talking to an AI, but they haven't minded apparently.

Thomas Wigg, landlord of The Kings Head, said: "Porchlight has completely taken the stress out of managing the phones during busy services at The Kings Head, and also when we're closed and no one is here. Knowing we aren't missing bookings when the bar and restaurant are full — while being able to track every call at a glance — has made a huge difference to how we run the pub. We wouldn't look back, it's made a massive difference to revenue and new features are constantly getting added."

Alistair McRae, founder of Porchlight, said: "Working behind the bar, I often wondered how many bookings we were losing to missed calls. Now we can actually see them, and instead of those callers going somewhere else, they're turning into extra revenue."

He added: "I built it myself because getting the same thing elsewhere means signing up with five or six different companies. That can cost up to nearly £1,000 a month, and none of them talk to each other. Porchlight puts it all in one app, one diary and one tablet. Pubs can even use their own hardware instead of paying thousands for someone else's."

Large pub groups have started trying AI on their phones too. Porchlight is aimed at the independents, and the phone is only part of it. The same app runs the pub's booking diary and live floor plan, staff rotas, clock-in and timesheets approved in a couple of clicks, wage costs against bookings, table ordering, and an inspection-readiness score for food safety. Alistair says it costs around £8 a day, which is less than an hour's wages for one member of staff.

Anyone can hear Thomas for themselves by ringing Porchlight's demo pub, The Lantern, on 0330 533 0495.