Little Italy has been a cornerstone of Port St. Lucie, Florida for over 15 years.
The original owner emigrated from Italy and passed down every recipe to the kitchen team before he passed away. Today, head cook Kelton keeps those recipes alive exactly as they were taught to him - nothing changed, tradition fully intact.
It's that commitment to authenticity that's made Little Italy a neighborhood staple with a fiercely loyal customer base. But behind the beloved food was an operational reality that owner Petra Demko knew was unsustainable.
During the dinner rush, Little Italy's operation was a pressure cooker.
A hostess, three servers, two pizza cooks, two kitchen staff, two dedicated phone employees, and three delivery drivers moving in and out of a busy restaurant - all at the same time.
"It was chaos," Petra recalls.
Even with two people answering phones across two lines, customers were still being put on hold during the 5-to-7 PM rush. And calls were slipping through entirely.
"Out of 10 phone calls, we probably lost two. That's during your rush hour. That's just crazy. If there's a human with a human, you have human errors. Granted, we are all human. We are all allowed to make mistakes. But it just happens too often." - Petra Demko
For a restaurant where a significant share of revenue comes through takeout and delivery orders, every missed call was money left on the table - and every hold time was a customer who might not call back.
Loman was recommended to Petra, and after an initial conversation with the team, she agreed to give it a shot. What stood out immediately was how fast the process moved.
"The starting process was done within three days because they work very closely with Toast. Every time there was a problem, I shoot a text message and within two minutes the problem is solved." - Petra Demko
With Loman handling inbound takeout orders through the AI phone agent and syncing tickets directly into Toast, the operational picture at Little Italy changed almost overnight.
Before Loman, Petra needed two full-time phone employees on every busy shift just to keep up. After rolling out the AI agent, she restructured the entire front-of-house operation.
"I only need one phone person now just to take questions, reservations, or a delivery order if people don't want to order online and still want to talk to a person," Petra says. "But all my takeouts are going through AI. I don't need an extra person. It's wonderful. No more chaos."
On some shifts, Petra doesn't schedule a counter person at all. Her pizza cook handles making the food and handing out orders - something that would have been impossible when the phone was constantly ringing.
"There are days I do not even schedule a person for the counter because my pizza guy can handle making pizzas and handing out the food - because he doesn't have to answer the phone." - Petra Demko
The labor savings have been substantial. Since adding Loman, Little Italy has cut labor costs by over 24% - a figure that goes straight to the bottom line for an independent restaurant operating on thin margins.
Port St. Lucie skews older, and Petra was upfront about her biggest concern going in: Would her customers - many of them seniors who value personal interaction - actually be willing to place an order with an AI voice agent?
"We were first really afraid they were not going to take to the AI because they like the personal contact," Petra admits.
The concern turned out to be short-lived. There was an adjustment period as the AI learned the menu and customers got familiar with the experience, but adoption came faster than expected.
"People took it, they dealt with it. They had questions in the beginning, because of course our wonderful AI lady had to learn the menu and had to learn the people. Now for the customer, it's like they talk to a real person." - Petra Demko
Little Italy's story is a straightforward one: a beloved neighborhood restaurant that was losing revenue and burning labor dollars on a phone problem it didn't have the tools to fix. Loman didn't change the food, the recipes, or the tradition that's kept customers coming back for 15 years. It changed the operation around it - eliminating missed calls, cutting labor costs by nearly a quarter, and giving Petra's team the breathing room to focus on what they do best.
"Since adding Loman, we've cut our labor costs by over 24%. I'll never open another restaurant without it." - Petra Demko
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