Call CalliBBQ to order some ribs, and your order might be taken by an AI agent called Shawn.
This Father’s Day, California barbecue chain CaliBBQ swapped its usual phone operators for an AI agent trained to sound like the restaurant’s owner, Shawn Walchef. The result was a smoother operation and a measurable bump in business.
Father’s Day, typically CaliBBQ’s busiest day, brings in about $20,000 in sales on average. This year, sales jumped 18% over last year, hitting roughly $26,000 across 268 orders. The driver of this success was Shawn AI, an autonomous assistant built by the startup Palona using its Restaurant AI technology.
Shawn AI handled about 150 customer calls, from catering questions to reservations and orders. Meanwhile, walk-in takeout orders (pickup orders placed in advance) soared 92% year-over-year, with all processed through the AI agent.
“There’s talk about [the rise of] AI agents and robots and [if] we are getting rid of humans. For us, it’s about scaling hospitality,” Walchef said.
AI agents, technology that is designed to carry out tasks traditionally performed by humans, are becoming ubiquitous across brands, especially on the customer service front. Palona’s Restaurant AI is already deployed across over 20 restaurants, including Pizza My Heart and Kobunga Grill, handling inbound customer calls with human-agent fallback available.
This surge in AI adoption is reflected in corporate budgets. A 2025 PwC survey of 308 U.S. business executives found that 88% plan to increase AI-related spending over the next year. Meanwhile, between 79% and 85% of enterprises have adopted or intend to adopt AI agents for business functions.
Yet industry experts warn against fully replacing human customer service staff.
Gartner projects that by 2027, half of organizations planning major customer service workforce cuts will abandon those plans, highlighting the difficulties of transitioning to “agent-less” models. Polling 163 customer service leaders in March, Gartner found 95% intend to keep human agents to strategically guide AI’s role, favoring a “digital first, but not digital only” approach that maintains human involvement.
