One restaurant can have one on and the other off, and nothing about either one implies anything about the other. If a caller, a customer, or a member of staff asks “am I being recorded,” the honest answer depends on which of these two things they actually mean, and this page exists so that question never gets a blurred answer.
01The two mechanisms, side by side
A text transcript of every completed call is generated and kept by default — not a setting a restaurant turns on, not something conditional on anything else being active. It's standard for every call, the same way an order confirmation is standard. Call recording — the actual audio — is the opposite in almost every respect: it's off by default, and it only turns on when a specific restaurant has separately enabled it for a specific location. Nobody gets recorded audio just because their transcript exists; the transcript runs regardless, recording runs only where a restaurant deliberately switched it on.
Transcript
- Default — on, for every completed call
- Turned on by — nothing to turn on, it's standard
- Who can see it — staff whose role needs it, never a named role here
- Kept for — a defined period, not forever, no published length
Recording
- Default — off, everywhere
- Turned on by — a restaurant, per location, deliberately
- Who can see it — same access principle, once enabled
- Kept for — same principle, not indefinite
A restaurant that turns recording on for its Flatiron location hasn't changed anything about how transcripts work there or anywhere else. A caller who's told recording is off has learned nothing about whether a transcript of that same call exists — it does, by default, regardless.
02What a caller actually hears about recording
Recording, being the one of the two that's genuinely optional, is the one a caller is actually asked about. When a restaurant has recording enabled for that location, the assistant asks directly, before the call goes any further, and the ask itself states the real terms rather than a vague “this call may be recorded” disclaimer. The question names four things in the same breath: why the recording would be made, who could actually hear it, roughly how long it would be kept, and a real, spoken alternative for anyone who'd rather the call went unrecorded. Calls quotes that ask word for word, as the moment it actually happens inside a live call; this page keeps to the shape of it rather than repeating the line itself.
A caller who says no doesn't lose the ability to place an order or ask a question; the call continues through the option the assistant just named. If a caller declines, or later asks for recording to stop, Dohos says so plainly rather than continuing to capture audio under a technicality:
Understood. I will not turn on [recording / stored transcript / either]. You can continue through [verified alternative].
Read that line for the recording branch specifically — a caller who says no to recording continues on the nonrecorded path the assistant just offered, full stop. And if recording was already running and a caller asks it to stop mid-call, the same honesty applies going forward:
I've stopped [recording / stored transcript / both]. Nothing more will be captured for that feature. What was already collected will be handled under the rules previously described and any rights that apply.
Again, read this for what it says about recording: stopping it stops new audio capture from that point forward. It doesn't reach backward and erase what a caller already said before they asked — what already exists is handled under the terms the caller was told at the start, not silently deleted the instant someone asks to stop.
The same underlying template also has a transcript branch elsewhere — and that branch isn't accurate to how transcripts actually work today, so it's never quoted or implied anywhere on this page. Transcripts aren't something a caller turns on or off mid-call the way recording is; they run by default, independent of anything a caller says in the moment.
03When the assistant genuinely doesn't know
Two direct questions come up often enough to answer honestly, on their own terms. If the system can't actually verify whether recording or transcript capture is active for a given call — a real possibility, not a hypothetical — the assistant doesn't guess in either direction. It says exactly that, and it stops rather than continuing on an assumption:
I can't verify the recording or transcript status, so I'm stopping the AI order flow. Please use the restaurant's verified alternative.
That's a deliberate, fail-closed design: when the honest answer is “I don't know,” the assistant doesn't pick the more reassuring-sounding guess. It stops the automated flow and points to a real alternative instead of asserting a status it can't back up.
And if a caller asks whether a person is listening in — a different question from whether the call is recorded — the same discipline applies:
I can't say a person is listening unless the system shows an authorized human has joined. Right now you are interacting with the AI assistant.
This is the honest version of a question that's easy to answer badly. The assistant doesn't say “no one's listening” as a blanket reassurance, because it can't actually verify that in every case; it says what it can verify — whether an authorized person has actually joined the call — and nothing more.
04What this page will never say
It's worth being direct about one specific sentence, because an earlier version of Dohos's own call script did say it, and it was wrong: a claim that a call is “not being recorded” and that “no transcript is being stored.” That sentence collapses the exact distinction this whole page exists to keep separate, and under the two-mechanism explanation above, it's false on the transcript half — a transcript is retained by default, regardless of what a caller is told about recording specifically. This page states the corrected version throughout rather than that line, and it never will state that line, on this page or anywhere a caller could hear it.
05Turning recording on
Because recording is the one mechanism a restaurant actually switches, it's worth being clear about what changing it involves. It isn't a single click buried in a general settings list — enabling call recording for a location sits alongside a small set of other consequential account actions (connecting a payment account, transferring account ownership, a bulk export of account data) that all require an extra step to confirm, on purpose, rather than the same one-tap toggle as an ordinary preference. The extra step exists because turning recording on changes what's true about every call at that location going forward, not just something cosmetic about how the account looks.
That deliberately makes it harder to switch on by accident, and just as importantly, harder for one person to switch on without anyone else at the restaurant noticing. Turning it off follows the same logic in reverse — a real, confirmed action, not a setting that quietly reverts on its own.
06If something about this doesn't match what you expected
- A caller asks why they weren't asked about the transcript, only about recording. That's correct, not a gap — the transcript isn't something callers are asked to opt into, because it isn't optional the way recording is. Recording is the one thing that gets a yes/no question.
- A restaurant wants to see a call's transcript and can't find it. Access follows role, not a simple toggle — someone whose role doesn't include call-record access won't see it even though it exists. That's expected behavior, not a missing feature.
- A restaurant wants recording turned on for one location but not another. That's exactly how it's designed to work — recording is enabled per location, not account-wide, so one location having it on says nothing about any other.
- Someone asks exactly how long a transcript is kept, or exactly who can see it. Neither is a number or a role name this page states — see Retention for the fullest honest account of what's actually settled and what isn't.
A transcript that seems missing, a recording question a restaurant can't resolve on its own, or anything that still sounds like it's blurring these two together — write to support — a real person reads it. Name the location, what you were doing, and any order or call reference you have.