Hospo never exactly stands still.

But over the last 18 months, three pretty chunky shifts have changed how customers find venues, how venues capture revenue, and how you turn a first-time customer into a “same again next Friday?” regular.

The venues getting ahead aren’t necessarily working harder, opening longer or throwing more people at the problem.

They’re getting smarter about three things: how customers find them, who owns the customer relationship, and which channels actually make them money.

Here’s what’s changing.

1. AI search is becoming the new front door

Remember when search meant typing “best pizza near me” into Google and scrolling through a bunch of blue links?

Yeah. That’s changing fast.

In February 2025, just over 10% of restaurant searches triggered an AI-generated result. By February 2026, that figure had jumped to 78%.

And AI isn’t just serving up information. It’s recommending specific venues, explaining why someone should go there and, sometimes, handing them a booking link while it’s at it.

The numbers are pretty wild:

• 45% of consumers now use AI to find local venues
• 12 months earlier, that figure was just 6%
• 83% of restaurants don’t appear in the AI answer at all
• When AI does recommend a venue, those visitors convert at 9x the rate of a regular Google search visitor

So the new discovery question isn’t just:

“Do we rank on Google?”

It’s:

“When someone asks AI where to eat tonight, does our venue even make the menu?”

Because for a growing chunk of customers, the decision gets made before they ever hit a search results page.

2. Missed calls are still eating revenue for lunch

Phones ring at the worst possible time.

Friday night. Kitchen slammed. Three tables need attention. Someone’s chasing a takeaway order.

And then the phone goes again.

Across the venue network, the industry average shows 40% of restaurant phone calls go unanswered.

Ouch.

Every missed call could be:

• a booking you never knew you lost
• a catering enquiry heading straight to the venue down the road
• a regular who gives up after the third ring

The estimated cost? $30.80 in lost revenue per missed call.

Miss 10–20 calls a day and you could be looking at a six-figure hole over the course of a year.

And here’s the sneaky bit: missed calls don’t appear on your end-of-night report.

There’s no big red line saying:

“Congrats! You accidentally lost $847 today.”

The revenue just… disappears.

Some venues using Otto are capturing phone-order revenue that would otherwise walk out the door. In some cases, that’s around $500 a day, per venue.

During a single peak dinner hour, some venues receive more than 30 calls. A normal phone line can only juggle so many before busy signals, voicemail and frustrated customers kick in.

AI doesn’t need to put anyone on hold.

3. Diners are choosing fewer favourites

Australians are dining out 12% less often than before 2020.

But when they do go out, average spend per head is up 8–15%.

Customers haven’t stopped spending.

They’ve become pickier about where they spend it.

Instead of bouncing between loads of venues, diners are building a smaller rotation of four or five favourites and coming back to the places that feel worth their time and money.

And food alone isn’t enough to lock that spot in.

One in three diners changed a favourite restaurant in the last year, not because the food got worse, but because another venue made them feel more known.

That changes the growth game.

Getting a customer through the door once is nice.

Getting them back again and again? That’s the tasty bit.

Big platforms want more of the customer journey

While customer behaviour changes, the big platforms are making moves too.

• DoorDash acquires 7rooms and Deliveroo
• Uber moves on Delivery Hero
• American Express owns Resy and Tock, and continues building in this space

Different companies, same direction.

Platforms want to own more of the journey: discovery, booking, ordering, payment and loyalty.

And to be clear, platforms aren’t automatically the bad guy. They solve real problems and can absolutely have a place in your channel mix.

But there’s a pretty big difference between using a platform and letting that platform own the customer relationship.

When customers order directly with you, you know who they are. You can reach them again. You can build loyalty under your own brand.

And if a platform changes its fees, algorithm, discount strategy or ownership?

Your relationship with your customers doesn’t disappear with it.

Fork yeah to that.

3 smart moves winning venues are already making

The venues putting up stronger numbers don’t always have the fanciest fit-out, biggest marketing budget or dream corner location.

Often, they’re just making a few better decisions.

And those decisions compound.

Decision 1: Shift delivery from aggregator to direct

One pizza franchise moved delivery volume away from an aggregator and onto its own direct ordering channel.

The result?

• nearly $250,000 a year saved in aggregator fees
• an 18% increase in the size of its customer database

No giant campaign.

No extra team member.

No marketing wizard waving a wand over Instagram.

Just a smarter channel.

And that channel change means more than saving fees.

When customers order direct, the venue knows who ordered, what they ordered and how to reach them again.

Instead of renting access to the customer, you actually build the relationship.

Decision 2: Make sure every phone call gets answered

A venue in regional New South Wales switched on Otto to handle incoming calls.

Bookings get handled. Questions get answered. Orders get taken.

Around the clock.

In one recent month, the numbers looked like this:

• 27 calls through Otto
• 16 confirmed orders a day
• $31 average order value
• around $500 in phone-order revenue captured every day

There’s another bonus too.

Someone calls in sick?

The phone doesn’t.

And when Friday night gets feral and 10 people decide to ring at once, AI can handle multiple conversations at the same time.

Your traditional phone line? Not so much.

That means fewer busy signals, fewer customers disappearing into voicemail and more demand actually turning into dough.

Decision 3: Talk to customers consistently

Random discounts aren’t loyalty.

They’re rented attention.

A Sydney pizzeria sends one SMS campaign every week.

Same rhythm. Clear reason to act.

Sometimes it’s promoting a product. Sometimes it’s filling a quieter day. Sometimes there’s a limited-time offer that gives customers a little nudge.

The important bit?

Customers know the messages are coming.

They recognise them.

And they act.

The venue hasn’t changed.

The relationship has.

Busy doesn’t always mean profitable

A packed Saturday night feels great.

So does a queue out the door.

But neither automatically tells you whether you’re actually making decent money.

Volume can be a bit of a show-off.

Profit is quieter.

The strongest venues look beyond order count and ask:

• Which channels actually make us money?
• How many customers can we reach directly?
• How much revenue comes from customers deliberately choosing us, rather than a platform sending them our way?

Because a channel doing huge volume isn’t necessarily your best channel once fees, discounts and food costs take their bite.

When you measure differently, you start making different decisions.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Margins are getting squeezed from both ends

If it feels like the pressure is coming from everywhere right now, that’s because… well, it kinda is.

• Australian wages rise 4.75% from July 1
• penalty rates, overtime, leave loading and new payday super timing add more pressure
• food costs keep climbing
• customers are becoming more selective

Picture an elastic band getting stretched from both ends.

On one side, customers are being trained to expect things like:

• free delivery
• 20% off
• buy one, get one free

On the other, venues often wear the discount and pay commission on top.

Stretch that far enough and something eventually gives.

You can’t roster your way out of every margin problem.

And you probably can’t sell enough extra schnitzels to make a terrible channel magically profitable.

The smarter play is knowing which channels deserve more of your attention — and building systems that don’t rely on discounting your margin into oblivion.

You’re probably sitting on more value than you think

Most venues already have three seriously useful assets sitting right under their nose.

They’re just not always using them.

1. Your customer data

Email addresses.

Phone numbers.

Order history.

That isn’t admin clutter.

It’s a direct line back to people who already know your venue.

If you can reach them yourself, you don’t have to pay a platform every single time you want them back.

2. Revenue that doesn’t need commission

Catering.

Private events.

Off-peak experiences.

These can generate better-margin revenue without needing a brand-new customer walking through the door.

Same venue.

Same kitchen.

More ways to make the numbers work harder.

3. Tech you’re already paying for

Plenty of venues use only a slice of what their existing tech stack can actually do.

Marketing tools sit untouched.

Customer databases collect dust.

Features that could save time or lift spend never get switched on.

You don’t always need another platform.

Sometimes the secret sauce is using the one you’ve already got properly.

Try this 5-minute profitability check

Want a quick reality check?

Grab your highest-volume ordering platform and pull up last month.

Find these five numbers:

1. total orders
2. average order value
3. discounts given
4. platform fees paid
5. food cost

Then calculate your estimated profit per order.

That number can be a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

Because the big juicy order total you see at the top of the report doesn’t tell you what’s left after discounts, platform fees and food costs have taken a nibble.

Now run the exact same calculation for your next channel.

And then compare your aggregator channel with direct ordering.

That’s usually where the real story lives.

3 questions every venue should be able to answer

You don’t need a 47-tab spreadsheet to work out where to start.

Ask yourself:

• Does my venue show up when customers search with AI?
• How many calls did we miss last week?
• Out of our last 100 customers, how many could we contact today?

If the answer to all three is basically “errr…”, you’ve just found your starting point.

The bottom line

Hospo isn’t going back to how it worked five years ago.

AI search is moving fast.

Missed calls are still quietly leaking revenue.

Customers are building smaller circles of favourite venues.

And the big platforms want an even bigger slice of the customer journey.

The venues getting ahead aren’t trying to out-hustle all of that.

They’re building smarter.

They’re owning more of the customer relationship.

They’re actually using the customer data they’ve already earned.

And they’re looking at profit channel by channel instead of being hypnotised by order volume.

Because growth isn’t about being everywhere.

It’s about knowing where the money is, who your customers are, and how to get more of them coming back on your terms.