Skai Solutions answers the phone for the 972 cafes and restaurants and 723 takeaway food services in the Wellington region, a market dense enough that a caller who cannot get through simply rings the place next door. It picks up every call, takes the order, and writes it into the POS you already run.
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 Wellington region includes Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua and Kapiti Coast as well as Wellington city, so these figures cover more than the city itself.
Wellington is the third largest food service market in the country and it is not close to the second. In ANZSIC group H451, which covers cafes, restaurants, takeaway food services and catering, the Wellington region had 1,794 businesses at February 2025 against Canterbury's 2,298 and Auckland's 7,398. Waikato is fourth at 1,617, which is inside 10% of Wellington.
Its 972 cafes and restaurants are 9.9% of New Zealand's 9,858, and its 723 takeaway food services are 9.7% of the national 7,422. Put the top three regions together and Auckland, Canterbury and Wellington hold 6,294 of the country's 9,858 cafes and restaurants, which is 64% of the national total in three regions.
The number that matters for a phone line, though, is not the count. It is how tightly the count is packed. Wellington's businesses are squeezed into a narrow harbour city and its satellites, and that is what changes what a missed call costs. The Skai Solutions Auckland page and Christchurch page work the same numbers for the two larger markets.
On Cuba Street, Courtenay Place or Willis Street, a caller who hits a busy tone does not ring back. They ring the place next door, because there is always a place next door. Density is why the phone matters more here than in a town where you are the only Thai restaurant, and it is why the cost of a missed call in Wellington is not the margin on one order, it is the margin on one order plus whatever that customer would have spent over the next year at the venue that did answer.
The same logic applies to hours. A caller ringing at 9.40pm to check whether the kitchen is still open has a shortlist, and the venue that answers gets the table. A recorded greeting can at least tell them your hours, which is worth doing properly; the Skai Solutions guide to what a restaurant answering machine message should say covers how.
Wellington's public sector and corporate base generates a particular kind of call: the group booking, the catering order, the last minute function enquiry. These are the highest value calls any venue receives and the easiest to miss, because they typically come mid service from someone who will only try once before moving down their list of options.
They are also the calls that most reward being answered properly rather than quickly. A function enquiry that gets a person who knows the room capacity and the dietary options converts. One that gets voicemail goes to the next name.
A genuinely Wellington problem: a southerly turns a walk in evening into a phone and delivery evening with no warning. Staffing for that is impossible, because the calls arrive on exactly the nights you rostered light expecting a quiet one. Phone coverage that does not have to be rostered is the only version of this that works, because the whole problem is that you cannot see it coming at 3pm when the roster is already set.
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 rather than the vendors.
Against a person: the adult minimum wage in New Zealand is NZ$23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026, and covering 5pm to 9pm seven nights is about 121 hours a month, so roughly NZ$2,990 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 put your own in. New Zealand has no hospitality award and no statutory weekend penalty rates, which is the single biggest difference from Australia and is worked through on the Skai Solutions page about New Zealand hospitality wages.
Fifteen minutes, your menu, your local addresses. Bring the hardest order you get.
Book a Free DemoA CBD restaurant that takes almost every booking through an online system and fields 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, which describes a large share of Wellington's daytime trade. The venues where the numbers work are the ones doing volume on the handset between 5.30pm and 8pm, and the function and catering venues where one missed enquiry is worth more than a month of software.
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 972 cafes and restaurants, 723 takeaway food services and 204 pubs, taverns and bars in the Wellington region at February 2025, within 2,508 hospitality businesses in total. The region includes Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua and Kapiti as well as Wellington city. Counts are randomly rounded to base 3.
Third. In ANZSIC group H451, cafes, restaurants, takeaway food services and catering, Wellington had 1,794 businesses at February 2025 behind Canterbury's 2,298 and Auckland's 7,398, with Waikato fourth at 1,617.
Wellington's venues are packed into a narrow harbour city, so a caller who cannot get through has immediate alternatives within walking distance and rarely rings back. Density raises the cost of every unanswered call.
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.