From Five Phone Lines to One AI: How Baci Trattoria Stopped Losing Orders with Certus AI

“I used to take the phone and throw it in the garbage. It was a killer. At the end of the night I’d say, I lost about six, seven phone calls. And maybe one of those could have been $200. Maybe a party of 20 people. You don’t know.” 

Frank · Owner, Baci Trattoria & Pizza · Naples, FL

An unanswered ring at Baci was never just a missed call. It was a table of twenty that found somewhere else to eat. 

Before Certus AI 

Frank built Baci doing nearly every job himself. 

“When the phone rang, I had to stop making pizza, go to the front, answer the phone. So I was not only the pizza man, I was the cashier and telephone person. It was a lot to deal with.” 

The phone trapped him there. Taking an order means knowing the menu 110%, so any call a staff member couldn’t handle came straight back to him. 

“The call always comes to me. So I can’t take a day off, I cannot leave, because I was stuck there. So what I mean here, it’s a dead business.” 

And it was never one phone. It was five lines — at the front, in the kitchen, green lights flashing — plus an automated message that kicked in after three rings, asking callers to hold while the team finished another order. 

Most people didn’t hold. They hung up, the same way a guest walks back out if no one seats them. 

On the busiest nights, Frank gave up on the phone entirely. He’d take it off the hook, or throw it in the garbage, because no one can work five ringing lines and a full dining room at once. 

“A person doesn’t want to hold for so long. I don’t care what anybody says — you do lose revenue.” 

With Certus AI 

Now one line does what five couldn’t. 

Frank cut Baci down from five phone lines to a single number, answered by Tony — Baci’s Certus AI — around the clock, without a single ring going out. 

“Never takes a day off. She works around the clock from 10 o’clock to 9 and she doesn’t complain. A human person cannot answer five lines at the same time. This program can. Employee of the month — she’s the best.” 

And the callers can’t tell. 

“A lot of people don’t even know they’re talking to a robot. They come in and say, ‘Oh, Tony took my order.’”

For the first time in years, Frank can step away from the front of his own restaurant.

An 11-year-old from a Brooklyn pizza shop 

Frank’s story in the business starts the year he immigrated to the United States. 

At 11, his family moved to Brooklyn and he went to work in a pizza shop. He opened his first restaurant at 19. 

Baci is the one that feels like home. The recipes come from his mother and grandmother — homemade pastas, made as fresh as you’d eat them at the family table.

“This place in Naples is a special place. This is like inviting customers to our house. They come in, ‘Hey Frankie, how you doing?’ ‘What are you drinking tonight? Glass of wine? All right, I have one too.’ It becomes like a family restaurant.” 

A phone that goes unanswered — or worse, ends up in the trash — is no way to welcome people into that house. 

Why he chose Certus — and why she’s named Tony 

Frank was not an easy sell. On his first call with Certus, he called the whole thing scary technology and admits he was dead against it. 

“At first I was very against it. And then I got convinced. And I’ll be very honest — a restaurant that doesn’t have this system, forget about it, they’re crazy.” 

The name wasn’t a throwaway. Baci’s regulars skew older, and they call the two people they’ve always known: Tony or Frank. So Frank named the AI Tony, so a familiar voice would always answer. 

“Our customers are older people. Who do they know? They know Tony or Frank. So I chose Tony. Your company to us is Tony.”

The best bill he pays 

Cutting four phone lines showed up on the bill, too. 

No more paying someone $15 an hour just to pick up the phone. And the phone bill itself dropped once five lines became one. 

“My Comcast bill was $700 between five lines and internet. It went down to $350. We only use one line now. You say, why? I don’t need it.” 

His conviction shows up in the expansion plan. Baci’s second location opens in September — and Frank already knows what gets installed first.

‍“By September we’re opening another location. The first thing is the phone system. The first thing that will get built is Tony.” 

The most stubborn skeptics make the loudest believers. 

Frank called it scary, fought it, then watched one AI do what five phone lines and his own two hands never could. Now he’s building Tony into the next restaurant before the ovens go in.

“Just give it a try. If you don’t like it, you cancel it. But once you try it, you will never go back to answering your phone. This is probably the best bill I pay every month.” 

Frank · Owner, Baci Trattoria & Pizza · Naples, FL