Yuan’s Garden 隨園 — no more missed booking calls.

A dining room, not a takeout counter

隨園 Yuan’s Garden has served Jiangsu-Zhejiang, Shanghai and Huaiyang cooking in Richmond for over two decades — the scholar-gourmet tradition, plated for today. Their Nanjing-style salted duck took Critics’ Choice at the 2024 Chinese Restaurant Awards, and the same year they were nominated for Best Casual Chinese at the Vancouver Restaurant Awards. Guests don’t call to grab a bag on the way home. They call to book a table.

The phone rings hardest at 6pm

Six o’clock is when the host should be at the door — greeting a party of eight, walking guests to their seats, working the wait list. It is also the hour the line rings most. A booking call that reaches voicemail rarely calls back: that party eats somewhere else, and the table sits empty at 7:30. And the calls arrive in Mandarin, Cantonese and English — sometimes all three inside one conversation.

What DineCall runs today

Their phone line and everything a guest sees online is DineCall, end to end. All of this is live right now:

• AI phone host answering their line — in English and 中文
• Table reservations taken and confirmed during the call
• Phone food orders on the same number, from the same AI
• Restaurant website designed and built by DineCall
• Bilingual online menu with prices (English & 中文)
• Bookings and orders landing on one live board the team watches

Taking a booking is harder than taking a message

Anything can record a voicemail. Actually booking the table is the hard part — and that is the part DineCall does:

• It checks real availability — party size against the table mix, turn times, last seating — instead of reading from a generic calendar
• It captures the guest’s name and party size correctly in either language
• It handles the negotiation: “can you do 7 instead of 7:30”, “make it six people”, “we’ll be fifteen minutes late”
• It hands the call to a human the moment the request is unusual — a private room, a large banquet, an allergy
• Every confirmed booking lands on the reservation board instantly, so the host stand always matches the phone

Nothing else had to change

Same phone number. Same host stand. Same kitchen. No new hardware and no app for staff to learn — the AI simply picks up the line the restaurant has always published, and can hold several calls at once when the room is full.