Restaurant wait times can change before you reach the door, but Yelp is giving diners a new way to check before they leave home. Its new Check for Me feature sends a voice agent to call a restaurant, ask about the wait, and text the answer back to the user.
The feature turns a common planning task into a quick request inside the Yelp app. Users enter their party size and phone number on a restaurant page, then let Yelp handle the call on their behalf.
A Voice Agent Takes On the Wait-Time Call
Check for Me will appear on restaurant pages in the app. After users provide their party size and phone number, the AI agent calls the restaurant to check the current wait time and sends the results by text.
That simple flow targets a task that often interrupts plans: calling a restaurant, waiting for someone to answer, explaining the size of a group, and remembering the response. Yelp places the request next to the restaurant information, connecting discovery with a direct action.
The feature builds on Yelp’s voice solution for restaurants and service providers, which the company debuted last year. This marks a new step for that system, shifting the voice agent from business support toward a task that helps people decide where to eat.
The result is a small but useful handoff. Yelp finds the restaurant, the voice agent makes the call, and the user receives the answer without leaving the app to search for a phone number.
Yelp’s Assistant Gets More Personal
Yelp is also updating its AI assistant, which helps users discover restaurants and services. With a new OpenTable integration, users can book a restaurant without leaving the Yelp app, keeping the search and reservation steps in one place.
The assistant will also remember preferences mentioned in previous chats, giving future conversations more context. Users can access chat history from the past 30 days in the app, with full history available soon.
Custom reminders add another way to turn a conversation into an ongoing plan. Users can ask the chatbot to send suggestions for weekend activities every Friday, creating a recurring prompt around the kinds of places and experiences they want to discover.
Yelp is expanding personalization beyond chat as well. Users can build their own lists, starting with Been Here and Want to Go. Those lists can be filtered by location, category, and cuisine, while users can reorder entries, add notes, and share them.
- Been Here helps users organize places they have visited.
- Want to Go collects destinations for future plans.
- Filters sort saved places by location, category, and cuisine.
- Notes, reordering, and sharing give users more control over each list.
Next month, Yelp will begin showing weekly personalized recommendations based on saved items and rankings. The company is also working on converting collections to lists and giving the lists tab a new look, with those changes rolling out later in the year along with a maps view.
Businesses Get an AI Reply Tool
Yelp is pairing its consumer-facing updates with a paid product for businesses called Smart Lead Reply. The service can reply to customers and engage with them to qualify a lead, extending Yelp’s use of AI into conversations that may help businesses respond to interest.
Business owners will pay $30 per month for Smart Lead Reply services. They can also specify how an agent should handle a conversation with a customer, giving businesses a way to set the direction for those interactions.
That control matters because a customer conversation can move through several stages, from an initial question to a clearer sign of interest. Smart Lead Reply is designed to handle the exchange and qualify the lead, while business owners define how the agent should respond.
Together, the updates push Yelp toward a more active role in local discovery. The app is no longer limited to showing restaurant details or collecting reviews; it can call for information, remember preferences, organize plans, surface recommendations, and help complete a booking.
The next phase will arrive through the expanding assistant history, weekly recommendations, upgraded lists, and the maps view planned later in the year. Yelp is building a system where a question can lead to a call, a saved place can lead to a recommendation, and a restaurant search can end with a reservation.
