Detroit pizza is unlike any pizza in the world. It’s rectangular, thick, chewy, with crispy cheese edges and a tangy tomato sauce. VIa 313 has it mastered. It does it so well that its phone lines were often too busy to handle all the orders. No more.
Kiplan Welsch, president at Via 313
“Partnering with Kea for voice AI is like having a super-reliable team member on every shift,” said Kiplan Welsch, president at Via 313, in an interview. “We thought if we were going to do this we wanted to do it the right way. And it’s paying off.”
AI answers 100 percent of the brand’s inbound calls for its 23 locations. “We have it use a script tailored for us,” he said. “What’s cool is when you call you hear the background noise of a busy restaurant. You hear action and activity. It’s very natural.”
Welsch describes a scenario that he no longer needs to worry about.
“The reality is with a live person taking orders, if they’re a little newer and not comfortable with our POS, there was some fumbling to get an order in. With AI the order goes straight into Toast and we can get it fired quickly into our KDS.”
The brand has seen a lift since fully implementing the technology six weeks ago.
“Orders are getting to our kitchens more quickly and we’re seeing incremental growth in checks,” he said. “With a live person taking an order sometimes they mention other items, sometimes they won’t, but AI does a good job being descriptive. We’re seeing more people taking a beverage or a salad or our Hubcap, which is our fresh-baked cookie dessert.”
While the technology helps with labor costs, Welsch views it more definitively as a tool to grow revenue.
“It’s all about speed. When you’re getting orders out more quickly, that’s going to help guest sentiment, which drives revenue. And it helps with takeout orders. If we can keep the quote times down for pick-up and the consumers say, Oh, that’s not too long for me to wait, that’s going to help,” he said.
With voice AI, orders aren’t missed. And multiple people can place orders at the same time, as many as 20 at a time. That is a big thing in Welsch’s world.
“With some of the concepts I’ve been with, on a Friday or Saturday we would have five or six staff members, but the phone is what would slow everything down,” he said. “”What we’re seeing from a call-volume aspect has been really strong.”
AI doesn’t fluster on the phones. In fact, the tech deploys an order-saving protocol if a call is discontinued for any reason.
“The AI will send a text asking if a consumer wants to finish an order,” he said. “Our KDS reporting shows us exactly how many of those orders get saved. That’s been beneficial.”
The new platform is giving the brand a boost after a challenging year.
“Like much of the industry, it was a tough year for same-store sale and same-store traffic. But as we’ve gotten into the back half of the year, we have started to see a shift. Even some of our restaurants that were down with same-store sales are closing the gap, flat, or slightly above,” he said. “We’re feeling good about the rest of the year.”
