Yelp Debuts AI Voice Agent That Calls Restaurants to Check Wait Times

Yelp's new 'Check for Me' feature joins a wave of AI assistants that make calls on users' behalf

Over the past few weeks, personal AI assistants such as Instinct, Fo, and Muse have enabled users to call businesses for customer support and appointment booking. Yelp is now following suit, adding a feature that lets its app users deploy a voice agent to call a restaurant and check wait times.

The new feature, called Check for Me, appears on restaurant pages within the app. Users enter their party size and phone number, and the AI agent then calls the restaurant on their behalf to check wait times. The agent texts the results back to the user, who can then decide whether to visit that particular restaurant.

Building on last year's voice solution

Yelp first debuted its voice solution for restaurants and service providers in 2025. With this new feature, the discovery platform is now addressing the consumer side of the equation. However, there is a possibility that a user's agent could end up talking to the restaurant's agent, and agent-to-agent communication might break down the conversation.

Expanded AI assistant capabilities

Yelp is also updating its Yelp AI assistant, which helps users discover restaurants and services. Key enhancements include:

• OpenTable integration: Users can book a restaurant without leaving the app.
• Better personalization: The assistant now remembers preferences mentioned in previous chats.
• Chat history: Users can access the past 30 days of chat history in the app, with full history coming soon.
• Custom reminders: Users can ask the chatbot to set reminders, such as receiving weekend activity suggestions every Friday.
• Custom lists: Users can build their own lists, starting with two default lists, "Been Here" and "Want to Go." Lists can be filtered by location, category, and cuisine, reordered, annotated with notes, and shared with others.

What's coming next

Starting next month, Yelp will begin showing weekly personalized recommendations based on users' saved items and rankings. The company is also working on converting collections to lists, with more updates expected.

via TechCrunch