Converse Now

What is Converse Now?

Converse Now is a voice AI system that takes restaurant orders by phone, at the drive-thru and over text, then passes them to the point of sale.

The company styles its name ConverseNow.

A guest calls the store or pulls up to the speaker and talks as they would to a person. The AI asks clarifying questions, offers add-ons according to rules the brand sets, confirms the order and injects it into the POS so the kitchen can start cooking. Staff who would have been holding a phone can stay on the line or at the window instead.

ConverseNow Technologies is based in Austin, Texas, and was founded in 2018 by Vinay Shukla, its chief executive, and Rahul Aggarwal, its chief product officer. The pair previously built Endeavor Software Technologies, which Genpact bought in 2016. The company lists seed, Series A and strategic funding rounds, bought ValyantAI in 2024, and says it now operates in more than 40 US states.

Key Features

Four ordering channels share one AI brain, so a chain can automate phones first and add drive-thru, text or kiosk ordering later without changing vendors.

• Phone Order AI: The agent answers calls around the clock and takes complete orders in natural speech. Sample transcripts on the site show it recalling a caller’s previous order, quoting a ready time and noting payment at the store.
• Drive-Thru Automation: A voice assistant greets guests at the speaker post and confirms each order quickly. ConverseNow pitches shorter waits and higher lane throughput, with order accuracy tracked through real-time analytics for managers.
• SMS AI Conversations: Guests can place orders and receive status updates by text message. The same channel carries promotional messages, and a personal AI memory helps regular customers reorder favourites with fewer back-and-forth steps.
• Order Injection API: Developers can plug the ordering engine into a brand’s mobile app or self-service kiosk. Custom workflows allow real-time orders from those surfaces to reach the kitchen through the same pipeline.
• Configurable upselling: Operators decide when the AI suggests extras, using triggers such as time of day, order size or guest behaviour. Coupons, discounts and regional menu pricing can also be set per market or store.
• Brand voice and languages: Each brand can tune the tone, persona and regional dialect its agent uses. Multilingual support includes Spanish, which matters for stores where a large share of callers prefer another language.

Pros

Labour relief at busy times is the strongest case for Converse Now, and the company says its system repurposes more than 83,000 staff hours a month across clients.

• No missed calls: The AI picks up every call, including during dinner rushes and after hours. Stores that once let phones ring out during peaks can capture orders that would otherwise have gone to a rival.
• Consistent upselling: Every caller hears the add-on suggestions the brand configured, every time. Human staff often skip upsells when busy, so automated prompts can lift average ticket size with no extra training.
• Proven at chain scale: The site names Domino’s, Denny’s, Hardee’s, Wingstop and Fazoli’s among its restaurant customers. It also reports more than 2 million conversations a month, which suggests mature handling of real-world orders.
• Fits existing tills: Named partners include NCR Aloha, PAR, Brink POS, Olo, Qu and Xpient. Orders flow into systems franchisees already run, so kitchens keep their current printers, screens and routines.
• Managed service model: ConverseNow advertises live support at all hours and dedicated engineers who keep tuning the AI. Operators get a supported product rather than a toolkit they must configure and maintain themselves.

Cons

Pricing transparency is the weak point, because Converse Now publishes no plans or rates and every deal starts with a sales consultation.

• No public pricing: The website lists no plans, per-store fees or per-minute rates. Independent owners cannot budget in advance and must book a call to learn whether the service is affordable for them.
• Built for chains: Case studies and named customers are almost all multi-unit quick-service and pizza brands. A single café or fine-dining venue may find simpler phone answering tools fit better and cost less.
• POS dependency: Order injection works best with the listed point-of-sale partners. Restaurants on another system should confirm compatibility early, or orders may need manual re-entry by staff.
• Vendor accuracy claims: The 95 per cent accuracy and labour figures come from ConverseNow itself, not from an independent audit. Run a pilot in a few stores and compare remake and refund rates before a wide rollout.
• Thin public documentation: There is no open help centre, developer portal or published security page on the main site. Technical and compliance teams will need to request details directly during procurement.

Who is Using Converse Now?

Multi-unit quick-service chains are the core market, with pizza and burger brands such as Domino’s, Jet’s Pizza, Hardee’s and Blake’s Lotaburger named on the site.

• Pizza chains: High phone order volumes make pizza the natural starting point. Franchisees use the AI to handle peak-hour calls and repeat orders while staff stretch dough and run deliveries.
• Quick-service drive-thrus: Burger and chicken brands test it at the speaker post. Their aim is faster lanes and consistent upsell prompts on every car.
• Casual dining brands: Chains such as Denny’s use it for takeaway phone orders. Front-of-house teams then focus on guests in the dining room.
• Franchise operators: Owners of many locations roll it out store by store. They track accuracy, labour hours saved and order volume through the analytics dashboards.

Pricing

Converse Now sells through custom quotes, and its site shows no plan names, store fees or free tier (official site, checked October 2026).

We found no reliable third-party price figures, so any number you see quoted elsewhere should be treated as a guess.

Disclaimer: fees usually depend on store count, channels and call volume, so ask for a written per-location quote and confirm contract length and exit terms.

What Makes Converse Now Unique?

Restaurant-only focus is the clearest differentiator. Many voice agents are general phone receptionists adapted for food service, whereas ConverseNow has trained its system on millions of real food orders and built its feature set around menus, modifiers, coupons and kitchen tickets.

Breadth across channels is the second difference. One vendor covers phone, drive-thru, text and app or kiosk ordering, all feeding the same POS integrations and analytics. The 2024 ValyantAI acquisition, which the company lists in its timeline, added further drive-thru experience to that stack.

Compatibilities and Integrations

Nine point-of-sale and ordering partners are named on the official site, from NCR Aloha and PAR to Olo and ItsaCheckmate.

• POS systems: Brink POS, Fiserv, Focus, NCR Aloha, PAR, Qu and Xpient are listed. Orders land directly in the till and kitchen display.
• Ordering platforms: Olo and ItsaCheckmate connections link the AI with online ordering and menu management. This keeps menus and prices aligned across channels.
• Apps and kiosks: The Order Injection API lets a brand embed AI ordering in its own mobile app or self-service kiosk.
• Reporting: AI Insights and real-time analytics show order volume, accuracy and conversation trends for managers and head office.

Converse Now Tutorials

Getting started is a guided project with the vendor rather than a self-serve download, and typically follows these steps.

1. Book a consultation through the website or by phone and share store count and channels.
2. Confirm that your POS or ordering platform is on the partner list.
3. Agree the brand voice, upsell rules, coupons and regional menu details with the onboarding team.
4. Pilot the phone agent in a few stores and watch accuracy and remake rates.
5. Review conversation analytics weekly and adjust upsell triggers or menu wording.
6. Extend to drive-thru, text or app ordering once phone results are stable.

How We Rated It

With a 3.9 overall, Converse Now scores well on POS integration and channel coverage but loses ground on hidden pricing and sparse public security detail.

Summary

Converse Now suits restaurant chains and multi-unit franchisees that lose orders to busy phones and want consistent upselling at the drive-thru. Its POS partner list, named national brands and four ordering channels make it a credible option for operators at scale. The main limitation is opacity, since there is no public pricing, trial or help documentation. Small independent restaurants may find lighter phone answering services easier to adopt. If you are evaluating it, ask for a pilot in stores with different order volumes and compare accuracy, ticket size and staff hours against a control group.