First Order London -- Press Kit

Michelin sends inspectors.
We send a phone call.

Key facts, story angles, copyable quotes, draft release and contact.

200+ Restaurant calls
15% Success rate
26 Neighbourhoods
1 Question per call
£20 Cost to run

The Story

1
The Idea
“What if getting a restaurant recommendation worked like a press call?”

Michelin sends people. Food critics make bookings. Everyone reviews the photos. Mike Litman asked a different question: what if you could just call the restaurant and ask? First Order is the experiment. One AI, one question, one honest answer from whoever picks up.

2
The Scale
“200+ calls. £20 spent. A new method for restaurant intelligence.”

Every call costs pennies. Every answer is unscripted. The database is building: which restaurants pick up, which ones are enthusiastic, which dish gets recommended most. The call log is the research.

3
The Question
“Why did the AI call an AI?”

The strangest calls in the dataset are the ones where First Order’s agent reached a restaurant’s own AI answering system. One AI called another. The conversation was polite. The recommendation was good.

Story Angles

Technology
An AI called 200+ London restaurants to ask what to order. Nobody told the restaurants it was AI.

First Order is a voice AI that calls restaurants and asks one question: what should I order? The answers are unscripted, the data is real, and the restaurants had no idea they were talking to a machine.

Food & Culture
The fastest restaurant intelligence system in London costs £20 to run and a few seconds per call.

Michelin takes a year to review a restaurant. Good Food Guide sends critics. First Order sends an AI phone call at pennies per call. The answer comes back in 90 seconds: what’s good today, from the person who made it.

Human Interest
The weirdest thing in the call logs: an AI called an AI, and the conversation was perfectly normal.

Some restaurants have their own AI answering systems. When First Order called them, the two AIs had a brief, polite exchange. The recommendation was sensible. Nobody noticed.

Business & AI
This is what happens when you apply voice AI to a question nobody thought to ask systematically.

OpenTable tracks bookings. Yelp tracks reviews written after the meal. First Order calls before you go and asks the people making the food. The technology is the same as enterprise AI -- the application is entirely original.

Quotes -- Mike Litman

“Michelin sends inspectors. We send a phone call. The answer comes back in 90 seconds.”
Mike Litman -- First Order London
“The best dish on any menu is the one the kitchen is most proud of today. We just call and ask.”
Mike Litman -- First Order London
“The strangest call in the logs: our AI reached a restaurant’s AI. The recommendation was excellent.”
Mike Litman -- First Order London

Data -- Call Outcomes

Outcome Count Rate
Answered + gave recommendation -- ~15%
Answered + no recommendation -- ~45%
No answer / voicemail -- ~30%
AI answered AI -- ~10%

From 200+ calls across 26 London neighbourhoods. Rates are approximate -- the project is ongoing.

Press Release

AI voice agent calls 200+ London restaurants to build dish recommendation database

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LONDON -- A London-based strategist has built an AI voice agent that calls restaurants and asks a single question: what should I order today?

First Order, created by Mike Litman, uses ElevenLabs conversational AI and Twilio to make natural-sounding calls to London restaurants. The agent asks for a dish recommendation and records the answer. No booking. No review. Just the one question that gets an honest answer from whoever picks up the phone.

In 200+ calls across 26 London neighbourhoods, the project has built a dataset of unscripted dish recommendations that no restaurant guide, review platform or food journalist has attempted to compile at this scale.

The most unexpected finding: some restaurants have their own AI answering systems. When First Order called them, two AIs had a brief, polite exchange. The recommendation was good.

Litman said: “Michelin sends inspectors. We send a phone call. The answer comes back in 90 seconds.”

The project is live at first-order-london.netlify.app. Media enquiries: hello@mikelitman.me

-- ENDS --

Notes to editors: Mike Litman is a strategist, builder and published author based in London (BCS, 2024). He has worked with Nike, Google, Unilever and McLaren. First Order London is one of 20+ AI-native projects he has shipped. Site: first-order-london.netlify.app

Social Copy

Content

Blog
What Happens When You Call 50 London Restaurants With an AI Voice Agent
mikelitman.me/blog/first-order-london-learnings.html
 Deck
First Order London -- presentation deck
mikelitman.me/first-order
 Site
First Order London -- live project
first-order-london.netlify.app
Exclusive for Media

We can provide: custom call log extracts for any London neighbourhood, a list of the restaurants most likely to give a recommendation, and an exclusive interview with the founder. Contact: hello@mikelitman.me

About

Mike Litman is a strategist, builder and published author based in London (BCS, 2024). BIMA 100 Tech Pioneer. He has worked with Nike, Google, Unilever, and McLaren across 15+ years in digital. First Order is one of 20+ AI-native projects he has shipped.

mikelitman.me LinkedIn first-order-london.netlify.app

For interviews, quotes, or additional data:

hello@mikelitman.me

Response within 24 hours.

mikelitman.me LinkedIn first-order-london.netlify.app