Their only server quit. Within a day, an AI host was taking orders.

The business

Wok & Karahi (Spring, Texas, north of Houston)

A family-run halal restaurant that serves Hakka-style Chinese food plus Indian and Pakistani dishes. Owner Abbas Zoeb runs it with his family.

The problem

Their only server quit, and the family didn't want to keep chasing one person to show up. "It started out of desperation," Zoeb says. Before, they sometimes had to close for the day when nobody could cover a shift.

The bot or tool

Haniya, an AI host the family built

The family built the software themselves with AI tools (the story doesn't name them). Haniya answers the phone 24 hours a day, takes table orders through a QR code, and works in 7 languages.

How they set it up

1. Put a QR code on every table. Guests order and pay from their phones before the kitchen starts cooking.
2. Set the AI to answer the phone 24 hours a day, take catering orders, and offer an add-on on every call.
3. Put orders from all 7 places (counter, phone, tables, website, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) on one screen.
4. Listen to the recorded calls every week.

It was live within 24 hours of the server leaving.

The result

• The AI phone line costs about $5 a day to run.
• About 4 in 10 callers say yes to the add-on.
• The family counts the system as worth about $9,650 a month. That includes the server's $3,500 monthly pay and about $2,000 for each day they used to close when nobody could cover a shift.
• Cooks now share in the tips.

Hours saved

not stated

Money made or saved

About $9,650 a month, by the family's own count

Source

No Servers, No Host, and No Phone Calls: AI Takes Over at a Halal Restaurant in Houston, Texas

Muslim Mirror (news), Oct 19, 2026. The $9,650 is the family's own count. The owner now builds systems like this for other restaurants.