An AI host for independent restaurants
Your customers’ AI assistants are about to start ordering dinner.
They can’t order from you. Nobody built the door, so we did. And we fixed the ordering page while we were at it.
The door is the Counter, a link on your own website. Dots, Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Muse can read it.
№ 02 / Her words
Ask her what's good.
Most ordering systems answer that question by reading you the menu. Here is what she says at our sample pizzeria when the kitchen runs out of the Sunday Gravy:
“Gravy's gone, the pot went early. Get the Marino: cup-and-char pepperoni under his own garlic hot honey, Parm on the hot top layer so it stays sharp. It's the one he'd send out himself.”
On Marino's Counter when the kitchen runs out of the Sunday Gravy. The swap and its price are read from Marino's live board when this page loads.
She knew the gravy was out. She knew why the Parm goes on top. She knew what to offer instead, and she didn't read a list.
“She knows your menu” is a claim. That sentence is the proof.
See how the Counter worksMarino's Counter is live. Its kitchen is a demo.
№ 03 / The interview
Twenty minutes with you. That's where she gets it.
We don't send you a spreadsheet. We ask you questions.
The kind of thing we ask
- What would you send to a table you wanted to impress?
- What would you never put together?
- What do people order wrong?
- What are you proudest of?
- What's gone by eight on a Friday?
Then her answers come out of yours.
That conversation is what she works from. The facts are yours. The sentences are hers.
- Something sells out, you take it off from your phone. It's gone from your ordering page and from what an AI assistant reads in seconds, and the answer an AI assistant gets back carries your own substitution and your reason.
- A new special works the same way. Put it up from your phone and it's on the board; with the voice host added, the phone line knows too.
- Hours, a price, a day you're closed: you change them in the dashboard. Nobody waits on us.
Your menu, in your words, in her voice.
№ 04 / The Counter
Right now that order has nowhere to go.
An AI assistant can't order from you today. There's no door. That order doesn't exist.
The Counter is the door.
For AI assistants, it's your drive thru, and a personal one. The chains' drive thru AI takes your order. Here, the customer's own AI assistant places it: someone tells it what they want, it pulls up to your board, places the order, and they pick it up at the spot you set aside for it. The big chains built drive thrus. Most independents never had the room for one.
For people, it's a new way to order on your own website, beside the ordering you already have. Your customers never get sent to a delivery app to do it.
Both are live. Marino's kitchen is a demo.
Your board, readable by all of them.
- Dots
- Grok
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
- Copilot
- Muse
The board is open to anything that can read a web page. None of these companies endorses Portata.
№ 05 / The menu
$20 a month. $1 when an order reaches your kitchen.
The Counter
$20
a month
plus $1 when an order reaches your kitchen
The upgrade
Add the voice host
$99 a month and $1.50 when an order reaches your kitchen.
She picks up the phone too, the calls you can't get to and the ones after close.
That's the whole price. No setup fee, no extras.
The $1 is charged when an order reaches your kitchen. That is the whole rule. A look at your board, a cart nobody sent, an order that never reached you: none of it adds a cent. The only thing on the bill besides the $20 is orders that reached your kitchen, and you can count those yourself in your dashboard.
No setup fee · Dashboard included · Month to month · Thirty days' notice to cancel
Beyond the $20, we only get paid when an order reaches your kitchen.
You only want a door on your site if people walk through it. Same incentive, both sides of the counter.
You shouldn't need to sit through a sales call to learn a price. Ours is right here, and it's the same one we'll quote you in person.
Rather write? stephen@portata.dev. A person answers.
Napkin math
Run it on your numbers, not ours.
Type over anything. The defaults are a guess. Yours are better.
Our cut: 3.9%.
The customer is still yours.
The voice host is the upgrade: $99 a month and $1.50 an order.
On a $31 order, the $1 fee is under four cents on the dollar. A delivery app can take up to thirty cents on the same dollar, and the customer ends up theirs, not yours. And an order with no door to walk through never happens at all.
What you're actually comparing it to
Your site today
A delivery app
The Counter
| Row | Your site today | A delivery app | The Counter |
|---|---|---|---|
| An AI assistant's order | Has nowhere to go | Yours, minus up to 30% | Yours, minus $1 (plus $20 a month)With the voice host added: $99 a month and $1.50 an order |
| The customer | Yours | Theirs | Yours |
| Knows your menu | Lists it | Lists it | Has opinions about it |
She isn't competing with your staff. She's competing with the orders nobody got to.
№ 06 / Before her first order
What happens after you say yes.
Your part is a twenty-minute conversation, a pickup spot and a few test orders.
- 1
You send the menu and hours.
A photo of the paper menu is fine. Your three or four most-asked questions help.
- 2
We talk for twenty minutes.
The interview above. What's good, what's gone, what you'd never pair.
- 3
The Counter goes on your site.
One link. It sits beside the checkout you already have and leaves it alone. Customers type their order, or their own AI assistant does it for them. Either way it lands on the live orders screen in your dashboard.
- 4
You set aside a pickup spot.
One place where every pickup order waits. Then you place a few orders yourself, the way a customer would, and tell us anything that sounds wrong. Then she goes live.
Every order lands on one screen. If you add the voice host, the phone's do too.
The voice host is the upgrade. A scripted sample, not a recorded call, rendered through the same path as a live call.
Read what she says
Hey. I’m Quinn, the AI host.
I pick up when your line’s already busy, and after you’ve closed.
I’ll know your menu well enough to have a favorite, and I’ll say so if someone asks.
Anything about an allergy, I get a person.
I’m not here to replace anybody. Just the calls nobody could get to.
Can’t wait to learn more about your spot!
You'd be among the first. We'll give you a real date once we've seen your menu, and we'd rather be slow than hand you a host who doesn't know your room.
Your dashboard
Watch her work from the pass.
Every order the moment it lands, and with the voice host added, every call as it happens. You sign in with a link to your email. No password.
- Live calls. With the voice host added, read along while she talks to a customer.
- Orders. Each one with its total, where it came from and any note the guest left.
- What's off. Tap a dish out for tonight and it comes off the board. With the voice host added, she stops offering it on the next call too.
- Host updates. Tonight's special, new hours, a closure. With the voice host added, she knows on the next call.
№ 07 / The questions that come up
What you're thinking, answered.
“She'll get an order wrong and I'll eat the cost.”
She shows the order and the total before it goes in. The Counter prices every line again from your menu and refuses any order whose total doesn't match its own, to the cent. Every order has a ticket in your dashboard, so if she gets something wrong you'll see it and we'll fix it. She won't answer allergy questions: she tells the person to ask your staff directly. Only an order that reaches your kitchen adds a charge.
“I already have online ordering.”
Good. Keep it. The Counter sits beside the checkout you have and doesn't touch it. What your checkout doesn't have is a door an AI assistant can use. The Counter is that door, for your customers and their AI assistants alike: the same board, readable by Dots, Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Muse, with what's in, what's out and what it costs, and a way to place the order once the person says yes. Anyone who likes your checkout keeps using it. You're not choosing between the two. You're choosing whether that order has somewhere to go.
What if the menu changes?
You change it yourself, from your phone. Take a dish off and it's gone from your ordering page and from what an AI assistant reads in seconds. Specials, prices, hours and the days you're closed live in the same dashboard, and with the voice host added the phone line follows them too. Nobody waits on us.
Last ticket
See her work before you talk to us.
Open Marino's Counter in your browser. See what she does when something is out, then read the same board an AI assistant reads.
If she doesn't sound like someone you'd put on your own site, close the tab. You've spent nothing.
If she does: $20 a month and $1 when an order reaches your kitchen. That's the whole price. No setup fee, month to month, and you can hang up on us with thirty days' notice.
stephen@portata.dev. A person answers.
№ 08 / The founder
“Nobody built the lane for a customer's own AI assistant. So I did.”
Stephen Grant · Founder, Portata
I put AI on hospital phone lines for a living. Portata is the lane for a different caller: your customer's own AI assistant.
My day job is enterprise sales at a healthcare technology company, putting AI voice agents on the phone lines of hospitals and health systems. I helped build them too, shaping how the agents behave on a live call, what they're allowed to say, where they hand off to a human. Healthcare is the least forgiving place to let an AI act for someone. You learn quickly which ones hold up when a real person depends on them, and which ones only ever demo well. An AI assistant ordering dinner is the same test with lower stakes. It guesses when nothing it can read is true tonight. The Counter is the lane, and the live board is what makes it safe to use.
Off the clock, I care about the same things a good room cares about. The wine list, the record on, the door at eleven, the pizza a regular orders without thinking. I know why one place is somewhere you'd stay and the one next door isn't.
Based in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. LinkedIn