Skai Solutions answers the phone for Christchurch and Canterbury venues, a region holding 1,269 of New Zealand's 9,858 cafes and restaurants and the second largest food service market in the country. It picks up through service and after close, takes the order into your POS, and handles the tourism and function calls your floor staff cannot get to.
Business counts from Stats NZ Business Demography Statistics, February 2025, by ANZSIC class, geographic units. Stats NZ randomly rounds all counts to base 3, so these are close but not exact. The Canterbury region includes Selwyn, Waimakariri, Ashburton and Timaru as well as Christchurch city, so these figures cover more than the city itself.
Big enough to be the clear second market, and small enough that the comparison with Auckland is the useful one. Canterbury's 1,269 cafes and restaurants are 12.9% of the national count of 9,858. Its 921 takeaway food services are 12.4% of the national 7,422. Across all hospitality classes, the region's 3,678 businesses are 13.3% of New Zealand's 27,636.
Put the food service group on its own and the ranking gets sharper. In ANZSIC group H451, which covers cafes, restaurants, takeaway food services and catering together, Canterbury had 2,298 businesses at February 2025 against Wellington's 1,794 and Waikato's 1,617. Canterbury is not narrowly second. It is about 28% larger than the next region down, and it is the only market outside Auckland with more than two thousand food service businesses.
Auckland, by contrast, holds 4,053 cafes and restaurants, which is 41% of the country in one region. So Canterbury is roughly a third of Auckland's size in venue count while covering a far larger geography, from Kaikoura down to Timaru and out to Ashburton. That combination matters for a phone line more than it sounds: a Canterbury venue draws from a catchment that drives to it, and people who are driving ring ahead. The Skai Solutions Auckland page works the density argument from the opposite end, and the Wellington page covers the third market.
One more figure worth holding, because almost nobody outside the region quotes it. The Restaurant Association of New Zealand's 2025 Hospitality Report put Kaikoura's hospitality sales growth at 10.2% for the year, the third fastest of any territorial authority in the country behind Nelson at 15.1% and Queenstown-Lakes at 14.2%. Kaikoura sits inside the Canterbury region. The fastest growing hospitality trade in the South Island outside Queenstown is on this page's patch, and it is almost entirely visitor driven.
Christchurch's central hospitality has re-formed around clusters, Riverside Market, Victoria Street, New Regent Street and the Terrace, rather than the single continuous strip other cities have. Customers are more likely to ring ahead because they are deciding between precincts, not wandering one. A caller choosing between three precincts is a caller working a list, and a list means the second name gets rung the moment the first one does not answer.
With 1,071 accommodation businesses across Canterbury, a significant share of restaurant calls come from visitors, and visitors ask things regulars never do: parking, dietary options, whether you are open on a public holiday, how far you are from their hotel. They also mispronounce your street name and read out an address you have never heard.
These calls are long, they are informational, and they arrive during service. They are also exactly the calls that should come off your floor staff, because none of them needs a person who knows the kitchen. What they need is something that knows your hours, your menu and the local map, and does not put anyone on hold.
Canterbury swings harder between summer and winter than Auckland does. Staffing to the peak means overstaffing the trough, and staffing to the trough means missing the peak entirely. Phone coverage that costs the same in January and June sidesteps the choice, which is a different argument from the usual one about labour cost, and a more honest one for a seasonal region.
Skai Solutions publishes NZ$325 a month for 500 included minutes and NZ$649 for 1,500, with extra minutes at NZ$0.87 and a one-off NZ$545 setup fee. Those exclude GST, so with 15% added they are NZ$373.75 and NZ$746.35, and a GST registered venue claims that back. Full detail sits on the New Zealand pricing page, and what an AI receptionist costs compares the pricing models across the market.
The comparison that decides it is a person. The adult minimum wage in New Zealand is NZ$23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026, and the Hospitality NZ and Restaurant Association Remuneration Survey published on 22 July 2025 put the average hourly wage in New Zealand hospitality at NZ$27.84, although that survey ran against the NZ$23.50 minimum then in force rather than today's. Covering 5pm to 9pm seven nights is about 121 hours a month, so roughly NZ$2,990 at the minimum wage once the 3% minimum KiwiSaver contribution is added, before holiday pay, ACC, or cover for someone who calls in sick. Those hours are Skai Solutions' own arithmetic, shown so you can change them. The Skai Solutions page on New Zealand hospitality wages works that side through properly, including the fact that New Zealand has no hospitality award and no statutory weekend penalty rates at all.
Fifteen minutes, your menu, your local addresses. Bring the hardest order you get.
Book a Free DemoA city restaurant that takes almost every booking through an online system and answers a handful of enquiry calls a week does not need this, and NZ$325 a month will not pay for itself. Neither does a cafe that closes at 3pm and never takes an order by phone. The venues where the numbers work are the suburban and provincial takeaways, the function heavy venues, and the visitor facing restaurants fielding long informational calls in the middle of service.
You keep your existing number. Calls divert to Skai Solutions, and you can switch the divert on and off whenever you like. Live in five days, no new hardware, no lock-in contract. It connects to Kounta and Lightspeed among others, so orders land where your kitchen already looks.
If you are still deciding whether the category is right rather than which supplier is, the Skai Solutions guide to what an AI receptionist is and does is the place to start, and whether an AI receptionist actually works covers the evaluation question honestly, including what it does badly.
Stats NZ recorded 1,269 cafes and restaurants and 921 takeaway food services in the Canterbury region at February 2025, within 3,678 hospitality businesses in total. The region includes Selwyn, Waimakariri, Ashburton and Timaru as well as Christchurch city. Counts are randomly rounded to base 3.
Yes. In ANZSIC group H451, cafes, restaurants, takeaway food services and catering, Canterbury had 2,298 businesses at February 2025 against Wellington's 1,794 and Waikato's 1,617, behind Auckland's 7,398.
Canterbury has 1,071 accommodation businesses, so a significant share of restaurant calls come from visitors asking about parking, dietary options, public holiday trading and directions. These calls are long, informational and arrive during service, which makes them the ideal calls to take off floor staff.
No. You keep the number your customers already know and divert calls to Skai Solutions. The divert can be turned on and off at any time.
More: Skai Solutions across New Zealand and how to choose an AI phone agent in NZ.