Yelp Adds AI Agent That Calls Restaurants to Check Wait Times, Plus New Personalization and Business Tools
Yelp’s Check for Me AI agent calls restaurants, then texts users wait times based on party size and phone number. Its assistant adds OpenTable bookings, remembered preferences, 30-day chat history and custom reminders, while new lists support notes, filters and sharing.
Yelp announced in October 2026 a set of new AI-powered features for its app, led by a tool that places phone calls to restaurants on a user’s behalf to check wait times.
The new feature, called Check for Me, appears on restaurant pages within the app. Users enter their party size and phone number, and an AI agent calls the restaurant, then texts the user the wait time results so they can decide whether to visit. Yelp had previously launched a voice solution for restaurants and service providers, and Check for Me represents the consumer-facing counterpart to that offering. The company noted a potential complication: if a user’s AI agent calls a restaurant that also uses an AI agent, the resulting agent-to-agent interaction could break down the conversation.
Alongside Check for Me, Yelp is updating its AI assistant with several new capabilities. A new OpenTable integration allows users to book a restaurant directly within the app. The assistant will now remember preferences mentioned in past conversations, and users can access chat history from the previous 30 days, with full history access coming later. Users can also ask the assistant to set custom reminders — for example, receiving weekend activity suggestions every Friday.
Yelp is also introducing personal lists, starting with “Been Here” and “Want to Go” options. Lists can be filtered by location, category, and cuisine, reordered, annotated with notes, and shared with others. Beginning next month, the app will surface weekly personalized recommendations based on saved items and rankings. A maps view and a redesigned lists tab are also planned for later in the year.
On the business side, Yelp is launching a paid product called Smart Lead Reply, priced at $30 per month. It allows business owners to deploy an AI agent to respond to and qualify inbound customer leads, with owners able to specify how the agent should handle conversations. Meta is among other companies that have introduced similar AI tools aimed at small businesses handling customer inquiries.