Julie Wyn and her husband didn't come from the restaurant world. No time on the line, no years waiting tables, no culinary school. When Julie's mother-in-law offered them an empty space in 2013 and asked if they could open a crawfish restaurant, they said yes - armed with nothing but a love for good food and a background in tech.
That bet turned into Mamba Hospitality Group, which today encompasses three Houston concepts: Crawfish Cafe, Pho Prime, and Ocean Palace.
Building a multi-unit restaurant group from scratch with no industry experience takes a certain kind of operator - one who's constantly looking for an edge. Julie and her husband are exactly that. "We both come from a background of tech," Julie explains. "Anytime new technology comes out we're like, 'Hey, let's jump on a call.'"
So when I emailed Julie about Loman, she didn't hesitate. "I was like, 'You know what? That would be amazing if something can help us with the phone calls.' We just struggled with phones. It's ringing off the hook." She took the meeting, and as she puts it: "It's one of the best decisions I've made."
Crawfish season is unlike anything else in the restaurant business. Julie's locations do their entire year of sales between January and July - a brutal, compressed window where every call matters and every missed order stings.
"Imagine it's all condensed down to this six or seven months. Every year we have to hire 30, 40, 50 people per location and then every July, August we have to start letting those people go."
The phones were the worst of it. When Julie signed up with Loman, Crawfish Cafe's Heights location alone was averaging 200 to 250 calls per day. The volume was relentless. "Imagine you're on the phone taking an order. You hear the beep and you're trying to click over, but someone's in the middle of placing an order. And as soon as you hang up, the phone's ringing. It's non-stop."
Julie's solution before Loman? Scheduling staff whose entire job was standing at the host stand answering phones all day. She even considered setting up a separate office with a team dedicated solely to fielding calls across all locations. It was an expensive, unsustainable band-aid for a problem that came roaring back every crawfish season.
The shift was immediate. When Loman went live, the constant ringing at the host stand stopped. Julie's hosts didn't quite know what to do with themselves at first.
"I had a couple of hosts tell their manager, 'I don't know what to do. The phones aren't ringing anymore,'" Julie laughs. "And we're like, 'Well, now you can do some other work. See the guests.'"
That's the transformation Julie cares about most. Not the technology itself - what it unlocks for her people. With Loman fielding hundreds of daily calls, her front-of-house team can do what they were actually hired to do: deliver a great in-person experience. And guests on the phone are getting through every time they call, rather than hitting a busy signal or being put on hold during a Friday night rush.
"Anything that we can provide to our team to help them focus on that guest experience is invaluable. There's no price you can put on it."
Julie ran the numbers early. At 250 calls a day, staffing two to three dedicated phone employees at $15 an hour for 10-hour shifts added up fast. Loman wasn't even close to that cost. "Price was never a factor for me," she says. "It was what can Loman do for me. Once I did the calculations, it doesn't even compare."
Her philosophy is straightforward: use technology to handle the work that technology can do, so the humans on her team can focus on the work that only humans can do - the warmth, the hospitality, the face-to-face moments that keep guests coming back.
"By incorporating this technology, it allows the humans that work for us to focus on the jobs that tech can't do - the guest interactions, the hospitality aspect, the experience of being in the restaurant."
Houston operators know hurricanes come with the territory. Last year, one of Julie's locations lost power - and two hours before they were set to open, the calls started flooding in. Is the restaurant open today? Are you guys serving? When will you be back?
Loman handled somewhere between 80 and 100 of those calls before the team even unlocked the doors.
"That's extremely helpful for my staff because we're coming out of a power outage and we're prepping and cleaning and trying to get ready to open for service," Julie explains. "If my staff is there having to answer calls - 'Yes, we're open, yes, we're open today' - it's very time-consuming and they can be focusing on other things."
It's the kind of moment that illustrates why Julie sees Loman as more than a phone tool. It's a layer of support for her team - one that shows up when things are calm and when everything is chaos.
"As an owner, having something like Loman handle the calls gives me so much peace of mind because I know that all of my guest calls are getting answered."
Julie and her husband built Mamba Hospitality Group the hard way: learning on the fly, investing in systems, and never being afraid to try something new. That tech-forward mindset is what led Julie to take a cold email seriously, and it's what made the Loman rollout seamless.
For restaurant operators running seasonal, high-volume concepts - or anyone who has ever watched their team drown in phone calls during a dinner rush - Julie's story is a reminder that the right tool doesn't replace your people. It frees them up to do their best work.
And for Julie, that's the whole point. "I really like having Loman there to support my team," she says, "so that my team can focus on their tasks."
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