Virtual receptionist for a restaurant
A voice agent that picks up the phone, checks availability in real time and records the booking in the database — no missed calls, no per-customer commission.
What it solves
In a restaurant, the phone rings right when things are busiest: calls get lost, bookings are jotted down by hand and mistakes are made. This system puts a voice agent on those calls — handling them and managing the reservations on its own — while the staff focus on the dining room.
How it’s built
A single call walks through the entire flow, from voice to confirmed booking:
- Incoming call — the caller dials in and a voice agent (VAPI) answers in natural language, asking for name, time and party size.
- Live lookup — the agent asks n8n whether a table is free at that time, and n8n checks the database.
- Instant reply — the availability comes back within the same call, so the agent can confirm or propose another time.
- Duplicate-free booking — once the caller confirms, the reservation is written to the database, with duplicates avoided.
- Voice close — the agent communicates the confirmation and the call ends with the table already on the books.
Why it’s interesting
The valuable part isn’t picking up the phone — any switchboard does that — but closing the booking in the database while the call is still live, without hand-retyping and without the customer having to repeat themselves. The result: no missed calls, bookings always recorded correctly, and the staff free to attend the room. Built on top of a custom database and automation tools, with no dependency on booking platforms that charge a commission per customer.
The workflow, in the open
The full workflow is published on GitHub: you can download it, import it into your own n8n and see exactly how it’s built, node by node → recepcionista-restaurante.json