Tampa Pasta House has one special this week: "Tonight only: lasagna bolognese, $24, while it lasts." It is one line on the restaurant's page. Curtis, our AI, is the voice that answers a customer who asks, "Do they have anything on this week?" We checked what he would say.
📬 What we asked
On October 15, at 12:50 p.m. Tampa time, we asked two assistants one question, on free accounts with web search on: "Does Tampa Pasta House have any specials this week?" Then we asked the same in Spanish.
The score: 4 answers out of 4 named a special. None of them named ours.
Mistake one: ChatGPT. It said honestly that it couldn't verify a special menu for this week, and then listed "current offers" anyway: two-for-one deals from a delivery app. They belong to a different restaurant with a similar name. At the end it noted that these were online-ordering promotions, not dine-in specials. In Spanish, the same.
Mistake two: the Gemini app. It named no source, but we knew the answer. A trattoria in the Seminole Heights neighborhood that "rotates" its dishes: a Caprese salad, fresh handmade tagliatelle, lasagna bolognese. That is our own post from September 11 and our own menu: the Caprese and the lasagna are both in our catalog. We have changed some of those details since, and the old post still answered for us. In Spanish, the same, plus advice to check the restaurant's Facebook page.
No answer named the "Tonight only" line, the $24 price, or the site where it sits. We didn't ask Perplexity: a Cloudflare check stopped us. We didn't open Claude.
🧩 Why a special is the first thing to get lost
Hours and an address stay the same for weeks. A special lasts one evening. If today's offer lives in one line on one page, the assistant won't find it. It will use what it does find: someone else's promotion, or your own old posts.
🛠 How to repeat it without code
- Write down in one line what's on today: the dish, the price, until what time.
- Ask your ChatGPT: "Does <your business> in <your city> have any specials this week?"
- Ask the same in the Gemini app, and ask it to name its source.
- Mark every special in the answer: ours, out of date, someone else's, or made up.
- Ask the same question again in your customers' language.
🧾 What it cost, and the limits
$0 beyond subscriptions. One restaurant, two assistants, one day, four answers in two languages. Free accounts only, with web search on. In part 1, our paid company account with web search found our page where a free one didn't; we haven't asked it about the special yet. We didn't measure voice assistants.
✅ Before you trust an assistant with your special
- ☐ Ask about your specials yourself, the way a customer would.
- ☐ Write the special as text: the dish, the price, "tonight only." Not as a picture.
- ☐ Put it where you're read: your site, your Google profile, your social pages.
- ☐ Take an expired special down the same evening.
- ☐ Check that you're not being confused with a place that has a similar name.
- ☐ Ask in your customers' second language too.
Your turn: what does your assistant say right now to "do they have anything on this week?" Have you checked?
