How We'd Automate a 3-Site Restaurant Group

This is a walkthrough of how On The Hill AI would approach automation for a typical multi-site restaurant operation. It's based on patterns I've seen repeatedly across hospitality businesses — the same bottlenecks show up in almost every one.

The Scenario

A restaurant group runs three sites across a city. They employ around 45 staff total. The owner-operator and a small management team handle everything from bookings and customer enquiries to supplier ordering, staff scheduling, and weekly reporting. They're growing but can't take on a fourth site because the admin already consumes most of the management team's week.

Where the Time Goes

Task	Hours/Week	Who
Booking enquiries & confirmations	8–10	Owner + managers
Supplier ordering & invoice chasing	4–6	Kitchen managers
Staff scheduling & shift swaps	3–5	Owner
Reporting & data compilation	3–4	Owner
Review monitoring & responses	2–3	Owner
Total	20–28

What We'd Build

Phase 1 targets the two highest-impact areas: booking enquiries and supplier management.

Booking & Enquiry Automation: An AI system that monitors email, web chat, and (optionally) phone. It understands context — party size, date preferences, dietary requirements, special requests — and responds in the restaurant's voice. It confirms bookings, sends reminders, and handles modifications. Complex or unusual requests get escalated to a manager with full context attached.

Supplier Order Automation: Connected to the existing stock tracking (even if that's just a spreadsheet). When items hit reorder thresholds, the system drafts and sends supplier orders, confirms receipt, and flags any discrepancies. No more chasing suppliers by phone or discovering you're out of something at 6pm on a Friday.

Phase 2 adds scheduling intelligence and automated reporting. Phase 3 introduces review monitoring with AI-powered response drafting.

Projected Impact

Area	Current	After
Booking enquiries	8–10 hrs/week	1–2 hrs (review only)
Supplier ordering	4–6 hrs/week	30 min (exceptions)
Scheduling	3–5 hrs/week	30 min (approval)
Reporting	3–4 hrs/week	0 (automated)
Reviews	2–3 hrs/week	15 min (approve drafts)
Total	20–28 hrs	~3 hrs

What This Would Cost

Discovery: £1,500 (fixed). We map the full operation across all three sites, rank every automation opportunity by ROI, and deliver a detailed implementation roadmap with a fixed-price quote.

Implementation (Phase 1): Typically £5,000–£8,000 for booking and supplier automation across three sites. Built in 3–4 weeks.

Implementation (Phases 2–3): Priced from Discovery findings. Typically £3,000–£6,000 per phase.

Discovery fee is 100% refundable if we proceed to implementation. You keep the roadmap either way.

The Bottom Line

A 3-site restaurant group spending 25–30 hours a week on automatable admin is effectively paying for a full-time manager who does nothing but process information. At £35,000+ per year in salary and overheads, the entire automation build pays for itself within 3–4 months — and keeps saving every month after that.

More importantly, it gives the management team the headroom to focus on what they're actually good at: running great restaurants and growing the business.