Since the start of the pandemic, many restaurants have seen great success taking their menus online, offering off-premise ordering via digital platforms. In a challenging labor market, these ordering channels provide a more efficient option for restaurants, enabling consumers to act as their own order taker. Yet, for all brands' efforts to incentivize adoption by making these channels as convenient and intuitive as possible, many consumers still prefer to call their order in via phone, the old-fashioned way. The ongoing popularity of phone ordering poses challenges for restaurants at a time when there is not always time to answer all the calls coming in. Victor Matchie, owner of Aloha, Oregon-based sandwich chain Monkey's Subs, spoke with PYMNTS about how the company's conversational artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistant, from speech recognition company SoundHound, enables the restaurant to meet this demand without the bottlenecks that can otherwise result from call-in orders at peak times.