Name CalliBBQ to order some ribs, and your order could be taken by an AI agent known as Shawn.

This Father’s Day, California barbecue chain CaliBBQ swapped its standard cellphone operators for an AI agent educated to sound just like the restaurant’s proprietor, Shawn Walchef. The outcome was a smoother operation and a measurable bump in enterprise.

Father’s Day, usually CaliBBQ’s busiest day, brings in about $20,000 in gross sales on common. This yr, gross sales jumped 18% over final yr, hitting roughly $26,000 throughout 268 orders. The motive force of this success was Shawn AI, an autonomous assistant constructed by the startup Palona utilizing its Restaurant AI expertise.

Shawn AI dealt with about 150 buyer calls, from catering inquiries to reservations and orders. In the meantime, walk-in takeout orders (pickup orders positioned upfront) soared 92% year-over-year, with all processed via the AI agent.

“There’s discuss [the rise of] AI brokers and robots and [if] we’re eliminating people. For us, it’s about scaling hospitality,” Walchef stated. 

AI brokers, expertise that’s designed to hold out duties historically carried out by people, have gotten ubiquitous throughout manufacturers, particularly on the customer support entrance. Palona’s Restaurant AI is already deployed throughout over 20 eating places, together with Pizza My Coronary heart and Kobunga Grill, dealing with inbound buyer calls with human-agent fallback accessible.

Palona uses large language models from Lama, Mistral, and OpenAI, along with its patented supervisor model.

This surge in AI adoption is mirrored in company budgets. A 2025 PwC survey of 308 U.S. enterprise executives discovered that 88% plan to extend AI-related spending over the following yr. In the meantime, between 79% and 85% of enterprises have adopted or intend to undertake AI brokers for enterprise capabilities.

But trade specialists warn in opposition to absolutely changing human customer support workers.

Gartner initiatives that by 2027, half of organizations planning main customer support workforce cuts will abandon these plans, highlighting the difficulties of transitioning to “agent-less” fashions. Polling 163 customer support leaders in March, Gartner discovered 95% intend to maintain human brokers to strategically information AI’s position, favoring a “digital first, however not digital solely” strategy that maintains human involvement.