Yelp's new AI agent will phone restaurants to check the wait for you

Check for Me is an AI phone agent. It calls a restaurant on your behalf, confirms the current wait time and texts you the answer within minutes.

You start from a restaurant's page or from Yelp Assistant. You tap "Check wait time now," enter your party size and your phone number, and the agent takes it from there.

In real life You are deciding between two ramen shops on a Friday night. Instead of calling both, you tap the button twice and keep scrolling. A few minutes later your phone buzzes with two wait times.

TechCrunch frames it as a trend. It says personal assistants such as Instinct, Fo and Muse have, over the last few weeks, let people call businesses for support and appointment booking. Check for Me brings that idea to restaurant waits.

Not today. Yelp says Check for Me is rolling out in the coming months. It will show up on eligible restaurant business pages and in Yelp Assistant, in the US, on iOS.

The catch: "eligible" matters. Yelp has not said which restaurants count, so do not expect every dining room to be on the list on day one.

TechCrunch points out a funny side effect. Last year, Yelp debuted a voice solution for restaurants and service providers. Now it is building the consumer side of the same conversation.

That means a diner's agent could end up calling a restaurant's agent. TechCrunch notes the conversation might break down when two machines try to be polite to each other.

CNET adds a wider picture. It reports that businesses must deal with an influx of calls and emails from bots, while human customers compete with AI agents to make reservations. It also mentions that Meta Muse and OpenAI Dots recently reached the market, and that Google keeps adding agentic AI to its booking and planning services.

For more on what these assistants do when nobody is watching, see our story on AI agents and a train refund experiment.

Check for Me is the loudest feature, but Yelp Assistant got most of the changes. Yelp says it is moving from a discovery chatbot toward an assistant that helps people get more done.

• OpenTable: The assistant can now discover and book at tens of thousands of restaurants nationwide, on iOS.
• Waitlist: You can join a Yelp Waitlist right in the chat and get real-time updates when your table is ready.
• Reach: Together with Yelp Reservations, DoorDash and Grubhub, Yelp says the assistant now serves more than half a million restaurants for booking and ordering.
• Access: Beyond its own tab, the assistant is now reachable from search pages and the search bar on iOS and Android.

Why it matters: Yelp is trying to be the place where you decide and the place where you act. Booking without leaving the app is the whole point.

Yelp says the assistant's answers will draw on reviews, past conversations and real-time weather. CNET gives an example: if you recently chatted about vegan restaurants, it will ask whether you want more vegan options.

TechCrunch says the assistant remembers preferences you mentioned in earlier chats. You can see your chat history from the past 30 days in the app, with full history coming soon.

Then there is Keep Me Posted. It lets you set scheduled recommendations, such as weekly date night ideas or dog-friendly hikes, delivered as push notifications. CNET says you can even set them to land on a specific day, like Thursday for the weekend.

A refreshed landing page also shows timely, trending prompts, and your recent chats are saved for later.

My Lists is a new way to save and rank places. It starts with two lists: "Been Here" for spots you have visited and "Want to Go" for places you are excited to try.

• Filters: You can filter lists by location, category and cuisine.
• Sharing: You can share them with friends by text, social and more.
• Where: The My Lists tab is available on iOS and Android, and all lists can be viewed on desktop.
• Next: Starting next month, Yelp will deliver weekly personalized recommendations based on your "Been Here" lists and rankings.

TechCrunch adds that Yelp is working on converting collections to lists, giving the lists tab a new look and adding a maps view, all rolling out later in the year.

The release is not only about diners. Yelp also announced Smart Lead Reply, an AI agent that responds instantly to customers after they submit a project through Request a Quote. It answers questions, gathers project details and qualifies leads.

Business owners can customize it with scheduling links, pricing, promos and more. TechCrunch notes they can specify how the agent should handle a conversation.

• Price: $30 a month.
• Start: Rolling out next month.
• Who: Businesses in eligible categories that use Request a Quote, including movers, roofers, plumbers, home cleaners, contractors and electricians.

Yelp adds that about 10% of Request a Quote submissions came through Yelp Assistant in the second quarter. You can now submit quote requests for up to five projects in one conversation.

Yelp also announced scheduling integrations with ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro, plus an expanded integration with Calendly, so customers can book directly with more professionals. Lead management integrations with Jobber and Workiz round it out.

Multi-location businesses get a redesigned Aggregated Leads Center, a single inbox for requests from all their locations.

For advertisers, Yelp Audiences campaigns now use intent-based custom creative. It matches a consumer's past search intent on Yelp with the most relevant brand creative across the web. A new Shopify Conversions app also links ad clicks and views to purchases in a store.

• Fewer calls: Check for Me is aimed at the "how long is the wait?" call. Expect it on iOS in the US in the coming months, not today.
• Booking in one place: If you use Yelp on iPhone, OpenTable reservations can now happen inside the assistant.
• More memory: The assistant will remember what you like, so your recommendations should get better the more you chat.
• Your phone number: Check for Me asks for it so it can text you the answer, so check what you are comfortable sharing before you tap.