Meet Shawn AI, the Pitmaster Who Never Sleeps

This Father’s Day, Cali BBQ quietly replaced its human phone operators with an AI agent named Shawn—and the results were anything but quiet. The voicebot, modeled off the restaurant’s real-life owner Shawn Walchef, handled 150 customer calls and is being credited with an 18% bump in Father’s Day sales, totaling $26,000 across 268 orders. Order ahead takeout spiked by 92% year-over-year—all processed through the digital version of Shawn.

Built by Palona using its Restaurant AI platform, Shawn AI is part voice assistant, part personality clone—trained using podcast audio from Walchef’s “Restaurant Influencers” show and the restaurant’s full menu. The AI proved so effective that Cali BBQ’s support phone and text volume dropped 25%, discounting declined 10%, and table turnaround time on the chain’s busiest day was cut nearly in half. Staff, freed from phone duty, doubled down on the dine-in experience and didn’t need to bribe disappointed guests with freebies quite as often.

The AI isn’t perfect—credit card integration is still on the roadmap—but the trial paid off. Palona, which earlier this year banked $10 million in seed funding, says its Restaurant AI is already working the phones at over 20 restaurants. That growth isn’t isolated; a PwC survey found 88% of execs plan to increase AI spend next year. Still, don’t count the humans out yet. Gartner predicts many brands will rethink slashing staff, preferring “digital first, not digital only.” For Cali BBQ, the goal isn’t to replace people—it’s to give them more time to focus on the ribs, not the rings.

Full story at AdWeek.