Thanx and Kea Bring Guest Recognition to the Phone Channel

The integration connects Kea's voice AI with Thanx's guest engagement platform — so every phone order becomes an opportunity to know, enroll, and reward the guest placing it

SAN FRANCISCO & PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thanx, the leading guest engagement and loyalty platform for restaurants, and Kea, the premier voice AI platform for restaurant phone ordering, today announced a joint integration that brings seamless loyalty enrollment and points accrual to AI-powered phone orders.

For restaurant brands that Kea serves, where 10 to 15 percent of order volume flows through the phone, that channel has always been rich with guest intent. What it hasn't had is the infrastructure to act on it. The Thanx-Kea integration changes that: every inbound call is now a moment to recognize the guest, link their order to their loyalty membership, and build the kind of relationship that drives them back.

"The phone has always been an inherently anonymous channel. You pick up, you take the order, and you have no idea who is on the other end. But hospitality is about making every guest feel known, not just the ones who walk through the door," said Zach Goldstein, CEO and Founder of Thanx. "When Kea recognizes the guest on the line, you can bring that same care to the phone. You know what they usually order, how often they visit, what they tend to enjoy. You can personalize the conversation and reward their loyalty right in the moment. That's how you turn a transaction into a relationship, and a relationship into a habit."

"Phone ordering is a high-intent channel that restaurants cannot afford to treat as an afterthought," said Adam Ahmad, CEO and Founder of Kea. "Our integration with Thanx bridges the gap between voice and digital. We are providing a frictionless experience for the guest to earn their rewards, and giving operators the comprehensive, 360-degree customer view they need to grow their business."

Closing the Loyalty Gap Without Disrupting the Flow. The Kea and Thanx integration automatically links a caller’s phone number to their existing loyalty profile or prompts them to sign up after the call. Order data and points accrue automatically in the background as the order moves through fulfillment. For brands on Thanx, that enrollment compounds: not only do they see nearly 3x more active loyalty members, those members are 5x more engaged within their first year, translating directly into repeat visits and same-store sales growth. Every phone order the Kea integration captures is a guest who would have otherwise stayed invisible, and a relationship that now has room to grow.

Key capabilities include:

• Frictionless Enrollment: New guests receive a post-call SMS payment link with a single-step enrollment option — no app download required. No script changes, awkward pauses, or extra staff training needed.
• Intelligent Account Matching: If a caller is already enrolled, Kea instantly recognizes their phone number. If the guest uses an email address associated with an existing Thanx account, Kea will prompt the guest to merge the accounts into a unified customer profile.
• Elevated Hospitality: For recognized loyalty members, Kea's Voice AI can be configured to deliver a personalized "first message" greeting when answering the call, providing an extra touch of hospitality.
• Automatic Points Accrual: Points accrue automatically when the order is confirmed. Even if a non-enrolled customer places an order and decides to enroll via the SMS link a few hours later, the system retroactively applies the points for that order.

Proven Success at Scale with Via 313. The integration is already capturing massive data segments for prominent shared customers, including Via 313, the award-winning, genuine Detroit-style pizza concept. Since expanding from a single food truck in Austin, Texas in 2011 to a rapidly growing brand with nearly 20 brick-and-mortar locations across multiple states, Via 313 has maintained a massive phone ordering business, generating nearly $100,000 in phone sales each month.

Historically, this volume meant that tens of thousands of dollars in monthly transactions remained entirely anonymous. By utilizing the Kea and Thanx integration, Via 313 has successfully digitized this high-volume revenue stream, ensuring every single phone order is backed by robust loyalty data and enrollment opportunities.

"At Via 313, we pride ourselves on delivering a premier hospitality experience across every single touchpoint, and phone ordering remains an incredibly vital part of our business," said Kiplan Welsch, President of Via 313. "Before this integration, our high-volume phone orders were a major blind spot for new loyalty enrollments and customer data. Now, by pairing Kea's Voice AI with Thanx, we can automatically reward our guests for nearly $100,000 in monthly phone sales without adding a single second of operational friction for our in-store staff."

Coming Soon: Dynamic On-Call Redemption. Thanx and Kea are already building toward the next layer: an experience where the voice AI doesn't just recognize the guest, but knows their rewards. In the near term, Kea's Voice AI will have full knowledge of the caller's point balance and redeemable rewards, and will be able to weave redemptions naturally into the conversation. Similar to Kea's intelligent upsell capabilities, the AI will proactively encourage guests to redeem rewards to increase their cart size or apply discounts to their current order—all in real time with Thanx.

Availability: The enrollment and points accrual integration is available now to mutual Thanx and Kea merchants. Brands can activate the service by contacting their Thanx Customer Success Manager and mapping their locations in the Kea Brand Portal.

About Thanx Thanx, Inc. (www.thanx.com) is the guest engagement platform for restaurants. Thanx helps brands grow customer lifetime value by turning retention into a strategic, measurable growth driver. Thanx captures 5 to 10 times more transactions than legacy solutions and uses that data to power personalized marketing, real-time lifecycle automation, and seamless digital experiences. 90 percent of Thanx customers grow first-party digital sales in year one, with most seeing 50 percent or more growth. Headquartered in San Francisco, Thanx was founded in 2011.

About Kea Kea AI is a leading restaurant Voice AI platform founded in 2018 by CEO Adam Ahmad. Kea helps restaurants capture every call and text with intelligent ordering, menu analysis, and payment capabilities. Integrated with more than 10 POS systems, Kea AI has powered hundreds of brands such as Rachel's Kitchen, Pincho, Blaze Pizza, Hopdoddy and Via 313. Kea has raised $33 million from top-tier investors including Marbruck, Xfund and Streamlined Ventures and is redefining how restaurants connect with their guests — one conversation at a time. For more information, visit www.kea.ai or book.kea.ai to book a demo.