How Gold Coast Kitchen Recovers $30,000/Month in Missed Revenue with Certus AI

"Mr. Calvin likes to get a 20-piece on Thursdays. He came in and said, 'Oh, you hired somebody new?' I said no. He said, 'Yeah, who was that dude on the phone? He was real cool.' I told him it's Certus AI. He said, 'You're lying! Where he at? He probably back there.' He put his head through the service window looking. I showed him the camera footage. The AI is not a real person." 

Ra Kadulo · Owner, Gold Coast Kitchen · Columbus, Ohio

When your customers don't believe the voice on the phone is AI, that's not a feature. That's the entire point. 

Before Certus AI

Every busy night, Ra had to make the same impossible choice: answer the phone or serve the customers standing in front of him. He chose the people in the building. The phone rang and rang. 40 to 60 calls a day — gone. At $20 average order, that's $1,000 a day his restaurant never saw. 

Customers showed up angry: "Y'all don't answer the phone! I've been calling for hours." He looked at hiring someone just to pick up calls. The math didn't work. 

He looked at half dozen other AI phone solutions. None of them sounded right. 

With Certus AI

The phone gets answered before the second ring. Every time. Certus AI's voice agent takes the order, confirms it, and sends it straight to the kitchen. Ra's team never touches the phone. Orders are ready in 15 minutes. And the customers? They think they're talking to a new hire. 

"I'm not about to blow money on labor just to have somebody answer the phone." 

Ra Kadulo built Gold Coast Kitchen from scratch — a family-owned spot in Columbus's Bryn Mawr Hills neighborhood serving American and African food from his mom's recipes. Drive-through, walk-up window, DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, QR codes, online ordering — he gave customers every way to order. But the phone was always the bottleneck. 

When the kitchen gets slammed — two 20-piece chicken orders, Philly 

cheesesteaks on the grill, ice cream, drive-through, walk-up — nobody's left to answer the phone. And hiring someone just for that? Not worth the labor cost. Even if he did, staff have moods. Some days the energy is great, some days it's not — and customers can hear it. 

Worse, a chunk of those calls were people asking questions they could've found on Google — tying up the line for 10–15 minutes while real orders waited. Ra tested every AI phone solution on the market. None of them felt right — until he called a Certus AI-powered restaurant in Michigan and experienced it firsthand. The AI didn't rush him. It handled background noise. It sounded real. 

"This is what I've been looking for. This solves all my problems." 

"He sounds like someone from the neighborhood. When customers call, they feel like they're talking to a real person. When I tell them it's AI, they actually get confused.""He sounds like someone from the neighborhood. When customers call, they feel like they're talking to a real person. When I tell them it's AI, they actually get confused.

Ra Kadulo — Owner, Gold Coast Kitchen

You're probably losing $500–$1,000 a day to missed phone calls. Most restaurant owners are.

Certus AI answers every call, takes every order, and sounds so real your customers won't know the difference. It never calls in sick. It never has a bad day. It works during your busiest rush and at 2am when someone wants to know if you're open tomorrow. 

No contracts. No setup fees. Running in your restaurant within 48 hours.

• 100% Call Capture — Every call answered, no exceptions
• 24/7 Availability — Takes orders even when you're closed
• Instant Order Taking — No hold times, no mistakes
• POS Integration — Orders sync automatically

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