Kea
Kea is voice AI phone ordering for restaurants — answer every call, take orders straight to your POS.
If your phone rings off the hook at dinner rush and you run a supported POS, Kea's flat monthly fee and 99.3% order-accuracy claim make it one of the more defensible buys in restaurant voice AI. The catch is the pricing model: it rewards high call volume and punishes low — under roughly 50 calls a month, a per-call rival likely costs less. Confirm your POS is one of the 11+ supported systems before you commit.
Verified 1d ago · liveness 78/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/kea
- High-volume fast-casual and QSR restaurants missing orders during dinner rush
- Multi-location brands (50+ locations) wanting centralized AI management and bulk edits
- Operators trying to recover lost phone-order revenue without adding staff
- Restaurants that want both voice and SMS ordering in one platform
- Fine-dining restaurants where every guest expects a human host
- Low-call-volume spots under ~50 calls/month where per-call pricing can be cheaper
- Operators whose menus aren't digitized or clean enough for the AI Menu Analyzer
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Skip Kea if you're a low-call-volume restaurant (under ~50 calls/month) where per-call pricing is cheaper, or if you need fine-dining nuance beyond what a voice AI can handle.
The $450/month flat fee is per location, so multi-location brands pay $450 for each site unless you qualify for custom multi-location pricing (50+ locations).
Kea's flat $450/mo fits high-volume single-location restaurants that would otherwise pay per-call fees that escalate with volume. Compared to Maple AI or Revmo, which charge per call, Kea's flat rate becomes cheaper once you hit ~200+ calls/month. For low-volume spots, per-call pricing is more economical.
In short
Kea — Kea is voice AI phone ordering for restaurants — answer every call, take orders straight to your POS. Best for High-volume fast-casual and QSR restaurants missing orders during dinner rush, Multi-location brands (50+ locations) wanting centralized AI management and bulk edits, Operators trying to recover lost phone-order revenue without adding staff. Plans from $450/mo.
What's new in Kea
Checked 16 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 4 news mentions.
Restaurant Phone Ordering System: The 2026 Operator's Guide
Comprehensive guide covering AI phone ordering systems, ROI, integration, and provider comparison for 2026.
What is the best Loman alternative for restaurants?
Positions Kea as a leading alternative to Loman, highlighting features and benefits.
Restaurant Phone Answering Service: The 2026 Operator's Guide
Guide covering cost, ROI, and provider selection for AI phone answering services.
AI Answering Service for Restaurants
Overview comparing cost, ROI, and top providers to capture missed-call revenue.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Kea? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Voice AI ordering that handles modifiers and menu rules
- Unlimited concurrent calls with a dedicated Kea number
- Text AI ordering, questions, and payment over SMS
- Direct POS integrations with tickets printing straight to KDS
- AI Judge cross-checks every order against the live menu (99.3% accuracy)
- AI Menu Analyzer follows your curated menu to stop item hallucinations
- 86 detection with substitution suggestions in real time
- Secure payments via credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay
- Self-delivery and third-party delivery handling
- Reservation and waitlist management
- Spam call handling on the Kea number
- Real-time call reporting and revenue trend analysis
- Daily Data Guru SMS digest of calls and order revenue saved
- Mobile-friendly portal to edit greetings and voice settings
- Bulk edit across 50+ locations with brand-wide changes
About Kea
Kea is a voice AI ordering platform for restaurants that picks up the phone when the dining room is slammed and the tickets keep coming. It answers unlimited concurrent calls — the vendor's own pitch is "5 callers at once? No problem" — captures orders down to the extra-crispy modifiers, and pushes tickets straight to the kitchen KDS through 11+ direct POS integrations including Toast, Square, Clover, and Olo. The AI Menu Analyzer ties the agent to your live menu so it reads wild item names and custom substitutions instead of hallucinating a dozen ketchups, while an AI Judge cross-checks each order against the menu and reports 99.3% accuracy. Beyond phone, Kea now bridges voice and text: Text AI lets guests order, ask questions, or pay over SMS. Payments run through credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, with both self-delivery and third-party delivery handled in the same flow. Real-time call reporting and trend analysis show how much revenue is slipping away, the Data Guru texts you a daily call-and-revenue digest, and the Food Critic keeps customers current on 86'd items and modifier limits. Reservations, waitlists, holiday hours, and spam call handling are all covered, and the mobile-friendly portal lets you edit greetings and voice settings from your phone with changes live on the next call. Setup is billed as about 30 minutes: create the account, connect your POS, forward calls to your dedicated Kea number, and let the bird answer. Multi-location brands with 50+ locations get bulk editing and custom pricing, and Kea advertises "setup in a day, not 8-12 weeks" versus slower rollouts. The model is one flat monthly fee with no per-order costs, which is where Kea separates from per-call rivals: predictable spend as call volume climbs, which suits peak-heavy QSR and fast-casual operations. The vendor cites an average $677/month in recovered missed-order revenue, and Via 313 reports $22K-$26K a week in phone orders. If your call volume is thin or your service is
Behind the Verdict
We'd reach for Kea when the problem is genuinely volume. Dinner rush brings more calls than staff can answer, and the math is simple: every missed ring is a lost ticket. Kea's direct-to-POS plumbing, 86 detection with substitution suggestions, and the AI Judge's menu cross-check target exactly that failure mode, and past customers report real numbers, not vibes — Via 313 averages $22K-$26K weekly in phone orders, Secret Stash says it captured 10,000+ calls and $100K+ in orders. Our favorite feature is the menu handling. Hidden modifiers, half-and-half specialty pizzas, wild menu names — that's where phone AI usually falls apart, and Kea built the AI Menu Analyzer specifically to follow your curated menu instead of inventing items. The Text AI addition matters more than it looks. Some guests simply won't call, and letting them order, ask questions, or pay over SMS catches demand that voice-only tools leave on the table. Where it bites: the flat fee. If you're a low-volume spot taking under ~50 calls a month, you're subsidizing other restaurants' peak hours, and per-call pricing from rivals is the rational pick. Fine dining is another pass — the personal sommelier touch isn't what this is built for, and neither is a menu that isn't digitized yet. On rollout, the honest caveat is that "30 minutes" assumes your POS menu is clean and your call forwarding is sorted. Operators with messy menus should budget more time for the AI Menu Analyzer build-out. Multi-location brands at 50+ stores get bulk editing and custom pricing, and that's where the platform's centralized management pays off most. The closest alternative depends on your billing preference: per-call providers like Loman compete on the low end, while Kea's flat rate wins once volume climbs. Pick Kea for
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Kea actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Dinner rush brings 5+ simultaneous calls; staff is overwhelmed.
Outcome: Kea answers every call, takes orders with modifiers, and sends tickets straight to the kitchen, capturing revenue that would otherwise be lost.
Need to roll out a new menu across all locations and update AI greetings.
Outcome: Use Kea's bulk edit to make brand-wide changes in 2 clicks, with updates going live on the next call.
Calls come in after closing, and you want to capture orders for next day.
Outcome: Kea's 24/7 answering handles off-hours calls, taking orders and payments, so you wake up to new revenue.
Use Cases
- Automate phone orders for a busy pizzeria during dinner rush
- Handle after-hours calls to capture orders when you're closed
- Reduce labor costs by eliminating dedicated phone order takers
- Manage high call volume with up to 5 simultaneous callers
- Offer text-based ordering for customers who prefer SMS
- Centralize AI management across 50+ locations with bulk editing
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-14
Limitations
- Kea is designed for restaurants and connects to POS systems for order taking.
- Reports show restaurants save on average $677 per month in missed order revenue.
- Setup takes about 30 minutes, and the AI handles unlimited concurrent calls.
as of 2026-08-29
Verification history
We have re-verified Kea 18 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 18 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Kea tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Single Location
$450/mo
Ideal for
Independent high-volume restaurants (QSRs, pizzerias) that miss calls during peaks and want predictable flat-rate pricing.
What this tier adds
Starting tier with unlimited concurrent calls, direct POS integrations, AI Judge, and Text AI. Priced at $450/mo with no per-order fees.
Multi-Location (50+ locations)
Custom
Ideal for
Franchise groups and multi-unit operators needing centralized AI management and bulk updates across 50+ sites.
What this tier adds
Adds bulk edit setup, brand-wide changes in 2 clicks, and custom pricing — requires a sales conversation for quoting.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Kea's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Kea's flat $450/mo fits high-volume single-location restaurants that would otherwise pay per-call fees that escalate with volume. Compared to Maple AI or Revmo, which charge per call, Kea's flat rate becomes cheaper once you hit ~200+ calls/month. For low-volume spots, per-call pricing is more economical.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Kea — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Setup takes about 30 minutes: create an account, connect your POS menu (under 15 minutes), and forward calls to your dedicated Kea number. Changes go live on the next call.
Switching to or from Kea
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From a human-based answering service: forward your calls to Kea's dedicated number and connect your POS; most operators see setup in under 30 minutes.
- ↗To a per-call rival like Maple AI or Revmo: export your call logs and customer data from Kea's portal, then port your phone number to the new provider.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
- Documentationkea.ai
Docs
Full product docs from kea.ai
- Resourcekea.ai
Blog
Explore how restaurants use Voice AI to boost revenue, never miss a call, and deliver exceptional guest experiences
- Resourcekea.ai
Resources
Explore how restaurants use Voice AI to boost revenue, never miss a call, and deliver exceptional guest experiences
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Kea”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Kea” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Kea.
Official links
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