Build a restaurant voice agent in 10 minutes (step-by-step)
A literal walkthrough — wizard click by wizard click — to put a Turkish-and-English voice agent on a real phone number that takes reservations, answers menu questions, and forwards emergencies. From signup to first live call in 10 minutes.
This is the post you want when you've already read "what is voice AI" and you're ready to actually ship one. No theory. No use-case slideshow. Just the literal sequence of clicks that gets a working agent answering a real phone number.
Stopwatch starts now.
- A Call2Me account. $10 in free credits on signup, no card.
- The phone number you want callers to reach (we'll buy a fresh one in step 4).
- 5 minutes of menu copy-paste material (or skip — the agent works without it).
Minute 0–1: Sign up and verify email
Go to dashboard.call2me.app/register. Email + password. Verify the email — the signup credit only lands once you click the link. You'll see $10.00 in your wallet on the dashboard top-right.
Free credit, in our pricing model, is roughly:
- ~100 minutes of voice base ($0.10/min), OR
- ~67 minutes including telephony ($0.10 + $0.05), OR
- ~50 minutes if you also turn on call recording (+$0.05).
Either way, plenty for testing.
Minute 1–4: Run the wizard
Hit "New Agent" on the Agents page. The wizard asks you four things:
- What does this agent do? Pick "Receptionist / front desk" — it preloads a reservation-shaped system prompt.
- What language? Pick Turkish, English, or both. The agent stack is localized in 9 languages out of the box (TR, en-US, en-GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, pt-BR, AR).
- What voice? Pick one from the voice gallery — every option has a preview button. For Turkish restaurants we recommend a "warm, professional" female voice. For English, anything in the ElevenLabs Turbo set.
- Knowledge base? You can attach one now or later (we'll do it in step 5).
Hit Create. You're now on the AgentDetail page with a real, callable agent. The agent already has:
- A system prompt (which you'll edit next)
- A voice (changeable any time)
- A default LLM (
openrouter/auto— picks the best available) - An empty Knowledge Base slot
- An empty Phone Numbers section
Minute 4–6: Tighten the system prompt
The wizard's default reservation prompt is generic. Spend 60 seconds making it yours. The shape we recommend:
You are the receptionist at [Lokanta Adı], a [tür] restaurant in [şehir].
Your job:
- Answer questions about menu, hours, dress code, accessibility.
- Take reservations: name, phone, party size, date, time, special requests.
- Forward genuine emergencies (medical, fire, complaint about food
poisoning) to the manager at +90 5XX XXX XX XX.
Style:
- Speak naturally. Two-sentence answers max unless the caller asks for more.
- Confirm reservation details back at the end ("Tamam, X kişi için Pazar 19:30").
- Never say "as an AI" — you're [İsmin]. The restaurant hired you.
If you don't know the answer (special menu items, off-menu requests,
private events): say "I'll have the manager call you back," then collect
their name and number.
Paste it into the System Prompt box. Save (Ctrl/Cmd + S, or hit Save in the header). You'll see a green checkmark — that's the LLM config writing back to the database.
The single highest-leverage minute you can spend on an agent is rewriting the system prompt to sound like your business, not a generic helper.
Minute 6–8: Add a knowledge base (optional but recommended)
Go to the Knowledge Base section on the same page. Hit Add source. You have four options:
- Upload PDF — your menu, wine list, allergen guide. Common case.
- Upload DOCX / TXT / Markdown — same idea, different format.
- URL crawl — paste your menu URL; the crawler indexes the page (and optionally one click deep).
The processor chunks the document, embeds the chunks, and stores them in pgvector. Indexing finishes in ~30 seconds for a typical menu PDF. After that, the agent can answer "do you have gluten-free pasta?" by retrieving the menu chunk and grounding the answer in actual content — not making it up.
This is the single thing that separates a believable agent from a hallucinating one. Skip it for the demo, add it before you go live.
Minute 8–10: Buy a phone number and route it
Phone Numbers section → Buy number. Pick a country (Turkey, US, UK, ~70 others available via Telnyx). Confirm. The number appears in your list within 5–10 seconds.
Click Assign to agent → pick the agent you just made. Done. Call the number from your mobile. The agent picks up.
If the call doesn't connect on the first try, give it 30 seconds — there's a SIP route propagation step that's usually instant but occasionally takes a moment.
Total elapsed: ~10 minutes. Your agent is now live, takes calls 24/7, costs ~$0.15/minute including telephony, and gets every reservation it captures into the dashboard's Calls tab as a transcript + recording (if you toggled recording on).
What to do in the next hour
Three high-leverage upgrades:
- Webhook reservations to your booking system. AgentDetail → Webhook URL. Every captured reservation POSTs to your endpoint as JSON.
- Turn on post-call data extraction. Define the fields you care about (party_size, time, name, phone). The LLM extracts them after each call and stores structured records you can export.
- Connect a transfer target. AgentDetail → Transfer Targets. Add the manager's mobile. The agent now forwards genuine emergencies in real time.
What it costs in practice
A reasonably busy restaurant we've seen:
- ~120 calls / week, average duration 90 seconds.
- That's ~3 hours of voice / week.
- Voice + telephony + recording = $0.20/min × 180 min = $36/week.
- Compare to: one part-time host @ ~$15/hr × 20 hrs/week = $300/week.
The ROI math isn't even close. And the agent doesn't call in sick on Saturday.
Common mistakes (so you don't make them)
- Skipping the system prompt edit. The default prompt is fine; your prompt is much better. Spend the 60 seconds.
- Skipping the knowledge base. Without it, every menu question is a coin flip. With it, the agent grounds answers in actual menu text.
- Forgetting to test the transfer. Call the agent. Say something that should escalate. Make sure your phone rings. If it doesn't, the transfer target wasn't saved or the number format was wrong.
- Going live without listening to a recording. Make 3 test calls. Listen to the recordings. Adjust the prompt. Then publish the number.
Ready?
Sign up, run the wizard, and have a working agent before lunch.