#268 - Hospitality Meets Christian Wiens - The story of Mercury being in retrograde

Christian Wiens spent his teenage years working in restaurants where, on particularly frantic days, they occasionally dealt with the constantly ringing phone by simply ripping it out of the wall.

Years later, after a career building and growing technology businesses, that particular hospitality headache came back into view.

The result is Loman.AI - voice AI built to answer restaurant calls, take orders, make reservations and generally allow the humans inside the restaurant to concentrate on the humans standing in front of them.

Today it handles millions of calls across more than 1,500 customers.

The journey there has involved manually checking restaurant orders, walking around a zoo carrying three phones, personally buying customers’ food when the AI got something wrong and discovering that even the best sales process in the world is powerless against Mercury being in retrograde.

We Cover

Growing up working in restaurantsBuilding startups before any of them actually workedWhy modern AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to creating softwareThe difference between an impressive AI demo and technology a restaurant can genuinely rely onWhy Loman.AI tackled the difficult problem of order taking firstWalking around a zoo monitoring restaurant orders on multiple phonesPersonally paying for customer meals when the early technology got things wrongThe restaurant owner who finally got to take his children trick or treatingWhy Christian still personally gets involved in customer supportWhether customers actually care if they are speaking to AIHospitality as an innovation frontier rather than a legacy industryAnd the customer who refused to make a business decision because Mercury was in retrograde

Quotables

“We ripped the phone out of the wall so many times.”

“There’s never been an easier time to build a company.”

“I used to check all of the orders myself.”

“I haven’t been able to go take the kids trick or treating… I was able to do that this year because the phones were handled.”