Yelp Adds AI Call Feature 'Check for Me' Plus $30 Business Tool

Yelp's app now includes a feature called Check for Me that places an automated phone call to a restaurant to ask about current wait times, then texts the results back to the person who requested it, according to TechCrunch. The tool appears directly on restaurant pages inside the app, where a diner enters a party size and phone number before the call goes out.

How does Yelp's Check for Me feature work?

After a user submits party size and a phone number on a restaurant's Yelp page, an AI voice agent dials the business, asks about the wait, and relays the answer back by text, TechCrunch reports. The feature builds on infrastructure Yelp introduced last year, when the company rolled out a voice solution aimed at restaurants and service providers themselves, according to the outlet. Check for Me effectively closes the loop by giving consumers their own calling agent rather than leaving automated phone handling solely on the business side.

What happens when two AI agents talk to each other?

TechCrunch notes a specific risk built into the design: if a restaurant has also adopted an AI phone system, Yelp's consumer-facing agent could end up talking to the restaurant's own automated system rather than a staff member. The outlet states plainly that "there is a possibility that a user's agent will talk to the restaurant's agent, and agent-to-agent communication might break down the conversation." Yelp has not published a public fallback process for what happens when that handoff fails, based on the available reporting.

What else is changing in the Yelp AI assistant?

Beyond phone calls, Yelp is updating the AI assistant that helps users find restaurants and services, according to TechCrunch. A new OpenTable integration lets users book a table without leaving the Yelp app. The assistant is also gaining memory, so it can recall preferences mentioned in earlier chats, and users can scroll back through 30 days of chat history in the app, with a fuller archive promised later, TechCrunch reports.

The update adds custom reminders — for example, a standing weekend-activity suggestion sent every Friday — and a list-building feature starting with two defaults, "Been Here" and "Want to Go," which can be filtered by location, category, or cuisine, reordered, annotated, and shared, according to the outlet. Yelp plans to begin surfacing personalized weekly recommendations next month based on saved items and rankings, and later this year will convert existing collections into the new list format and add a map view, TechCrunch states.

Figures from the rollout

• $30 per month — the price Yelp is charging businesses for its new Smart Lead Reply product, per TechCrunch.
• 30 days — the amount of assistant chat history currently viewable in the app, with full history coming later, according to the same report.

What is Smart Lead Reply and who pays for it?

On the business side, Yelp is launching a paid product called Smart Lead Reply that automatically responds to and qualifies incoming customer leads, TechCrunch reports. Business owners who sign up pay $30 per month and can specify how the AI agent should steer a conversation with a prospective customer, according to the outlet. The product positions Yelp alongside other platforms competing to automate the first touchpoint between small businesses and potential customers.

How does this fit into the broader AI assistant trend?

TechCrunch frames Yelp's move as part of a wider pattern: personal-assistant apps such as Instinct, Fo, and Muse have recently added the ability to call businesses on a user's behalf for customer support or appointment booking. Yelp's Check for Me extends that pattern specifically to restaurant wait times, while its Smart Lead Reply product mirrors a separate push by other companies to sell AI-driven customer engagement tools to small businesses. TechCrunch points to Meta's own courtship of small businesses with AI offerings for handling inbound inquiries as a parallel example; HTT News has covered Meta's related AI-subscription strategy in a separate report on the company's broader AI monetization plans.

Taken together, the changes mark Yelp's attempt to sit on both sides of the same transaction — giving consumers an agent to gather information and giving businesses an agent to respond to it — a structure that, as TechCrunch notes, also creates the conditions for two automated systems to end up negotiating with each other instead of a person.