It was 2000. I’d just opened my own gourmet shop in Oakville, Ontario, carrying on a tradition my parents started back in 1980. We weren’t just another deli. We made solutions for busy professionals who didn’t have time to cook. Gourmet pasta. Prepared entrées. Grilled chicken. Real, quality meals for people running their own businesses.
I had the passion. I had the recipes. I had the vision.
What I didn’t have was a system that actually worked.
Everything fell on me
Finding the right people was a constant battle. People didn’t show up. When they did, they were overwhelmed. And when they weren’t there? Everything fell on me.
That’s when the real damage started.
A customer calls at 10:30 AM on a Tuesday. They want to order lunch for their office, a decent-sized order, maybe $200–300. I’m elbow-deep in prep work in the kitchen. My hands are covered in flour and sauce. I can’t get to the phone in time.
Office catering order
Tuesday, 10:30 AM
0:00
$280 order
It goes to voicemail. Thirty minutes later I call them back. They’ve already ordered from the sandwich shop down the street.
This wasn’t a one-time thing. This was happening daily. Multiple times a day. And every single missed call meant lost revenue and the sinking feeling that I was letting customers down.
Watching customers walk back out
I’d watch customers walk in, realize they’d have to wait, and just leave. Frustrated. Going somewhere else. And I couldn’t do anything about it, because I was stuck in the kitchen or on another call or dealing with a staff issue.
My family built something special. We had the quality. We had the reputation. But the system was broken.
I was working 80-hour weeks trying to do the impossible: be everywhere at once, answer every call, manage every crisis. And I was still losing orders. Still watching competitors win by simply picking up the phone.
It was never a cooking problem
One day it hit me. This isn’t a cooking problem. This isn’t a staff problem. This is a system problem.
I couldn’t hire perfect staff. I couldn’t clone myself. I couldn’t physically be in two places at once. But there had to be a way to never miss a call again. A way to answer every customer, every time, without hiring chaos.
So I started researching. I looked at how bigger businesses solved this. And I realized the technology existed, but it was built for enterprises with IT departments and budgets I didn’t have.
That’s when I decided: I’m going to build something different. Something for business owners like me.
So I built the thing I needed
I built Call Agent AI, an AI voice agent that answers your phone 24/7. It never sleeps. It never gets frustrated. It books orders, qualifies leads, and handles the front line so you can do what you do best.
No more missed calls at 10:30 AM. No more customers going to your competitor because nobody answered. No more staff showing up as the bottleneck to your growth.
What changed
Today, Call Agent AI helps SMB owners like Palma Pasta answer every single call. No more voicemail. No more lunch orders quietly going to the shop down the street.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s their owner.
The businesses that win aren’t the ones with the most staff. They’re the ones with systems that work 24/7, never miss an opportunity, and let the owner focus on what they’re actually good at.
Questions people ask me
An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers your business phone automatically. It greets the caller, answers questions about your business, takes orders, books appointments and passes the details straight into your CRM. Call Agent AI answers on the first ring, 24 hours a day, including weekends and holidays.
Pricing starts at $0.10 per minute, so you pay for calls actually answered rather than a flat monthly seat fee. For most small businesses a full month of answered calls costs less than a single missed order is worth.
Yes. You forward your current business number to Call Agent AI, so customers keep calling the number they already know. Your printed material, website and Google listing stay exactly as they are.
The voice is natural enough that most callers simply complete their order or booking. You control how the agent introduces itself, and it can state clearly that it is an AI assistant wherever you want it to.
You decide the fallback. The agent can transfer the call to a person, take a message, send a text with a booking link, or log the question in your CRM for follow-up. It never simply hangs up on a customer.
Most businesses are answering calls the same day. You describe how you want calls handled, forward your number, and the agent starts working. There is nothing to install and no hardware to buy.