By Roman Aglaganov
Yelp is adding a feature that makes the phone call you would rather not. With Check for Me, announced on 20 October, you enter your party size and phone number on a restaurant’s page; Yelp’s voice agent calls the restaurant, asks about the wait, and texts you the answer.
What else is new
Booking: Yelp’s AI assistant can now book tables through OpenTable without leaving the app.
Memory: the assistant remembers preferences from earlier chats, keeps 30 days of history (with full history “available soon”), and can send reminders, such as weekend ideas every Friday.
Lists: new “Been Here” and “Want to Go” lists can be filtered, annotated and shared. From November, Yelp will start suggesting places each week based on what you save.
For businesses: Smart Lead Reply, a $30-a-month agent that answers customers and qualifies leads, following the voice agent Yelp launched for restaurants and service providers in 2025.
Agents calling agents
Yelp is not alone. Assistants such as Meta’s Muse already call businesses to book appointments or chase customer service. As TechCrunch noted, the obvious problem is that the restaurant may answer with its own AI, and two agents talking to each other may not get far. Yelp sells voice agents to restaurants too, so some of those calls may be Yelp talking to Yelp.
Why it matters
Calling to ask “how long is the wait?” is exactly the kind of small, dull job agents are good at. It is also a test of how restaurants feel about a rising volume of automated calls. If phones start ringing with bots, expect more businesses to put a bot on the other end, or to stop answering.
