Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own.
When the lunch rush hits, the restaurant phone becomes both lifeline and bottleneck. Calls stack up while staff try to keep pace with the guests already seated. One missed ring can mean a lost table, a missed order, or a customer who simply doesn’t call back. For years, Gurveer Singh watched this happen inside his family’s restaurant, serving good food and great service, yet still thousands of dollars were lost each month due to unanswered calls.
Now, as co-founder and CEO of Certus AI — a Y Combinator–backed startup rethinking how restaurants communicate — Singh is turning that frustration into infrastructure. Certus replaces the traditional phone line with an intelligent voice system that answers every call instantly, takes orders, books tables, and connects directly to the POS.
“It never made sense to me,” Singh said. “Restaurants fight for every dollar, yet we were losing money just because no one could pick up fast enough.”
Replacing rings with recognition
Singh teamed up with Isaac Tom Nichols (CTO) and Adam Gamieldien (CRO) to build the fix. Certus doesn’t rely on pre-recorded menus or rigid decision trees. Its voice system listens, understands intent, and adapts on the fly — distinguishing between a customer adding extra toppings, checking the status of an order, or booking a last-minute table.
Isaac focused on the hard parts most people never think about — menus that change daily, accents that vary by region, and the chaos of background noise. He built the system to handle unpredictable inputs without breaking or hallucinating. Whether it’s recognizing a new special or navigating multi-location menu logic, the AI is built to think like a restaurant, not a computer.
Meanwhile, Adam drove how the product met the market — making sure it worked for real operators under real pressure. From mom-and-pop diners to multi-location franchises, his focus has always been the same: if Certus doesn’t save you time or make you money, it doesn’t ship.
What once required constant staffing now runs quietly in the background, turning missed rings into captured revenue, and giving restaurants back the calm they’d forgotten was possible.
Building reliability into human moments
Certus AI’s growth hasn’t come from big promises; it’s come from solving real problems under real pressure. Every restaurant reveals another edge case: menus changing mid-shift, bilingual staff juggling orders, customers calling while the line’s out the door. For Gurveer Singh (CEO) and Adam Gamieldien (CRO), reliability means handling everything automatically and without failure.
Gamieldien focuses on getting Certus into the hands of operators fast. He’s built the go-to-market motion from the ground up, working directly with owners to prove value in the only language that matters — time saved and revenue generated. That precision and urgency have turned Certus into a platform trusted by independents and multi-location groups alike.
When Certus entered Y Combinator, Singh used the momentum to push scale without losing speed. From expanding restaurant deployments to POS integrations, they’ve driven launch timelines from what once took weeks down to days.
Restoring the sound of service
Every improvement within Certus AI stems from a simple idea: hospitality depends on presence. When staff are free from ringing phones, they can return to greeting guests, serving food, and engaging in genuine interactions. The absence of interruption becomes its own form of luxury.
Restaurants using Certus report more orders, calmer staff, and happier guests. Inside the restaurant, chaos fades and service flows without interruption. Customers experience a responsive, human interaction every time they call, while staff notice the difference immediately: less stress, fewer mistakes, and more time spent with the people in front of them. Nichols describes his mission as “quiet efficiency,” an ambition to make technology invisible once it works correctly.
The startup’s early traction proves that precision doesn’t have to come at the cost of personality. Certus AI isn’t replacing hospitality; it’s protecting it. The system removes the friction that keeps staff from doing what they do best: serving people. Behind every calm dining room, thousands of micro-decisions are happening in real time, each call handled with the patience and warmth of a seasoned host.
Its funding from Y Combinator marks more than a startup milestone; it’s a signal of what’s next for independent restaurants. Before Certus, billion-dollar chains like Dominos were the only ones with the infrastructure to capture every order, every reservation, every opportunity. Certus gives that power back to the independents — the owners still on the floor, still answering phones, still fighting for every dollar.
The endless ring that once defined peak hours is disappearing. In its place is something better: steady service, uninterrupted attention, and the quiet confidence that no guest ever goes unheard.
