Online ordering provider Olo is launching a customer-facing ordering app that will feature hundreds of restaurant chains in one place.
The Olo App will be commission-free for restaurants and will also give them access to customer data from across Olo’s restaurant base, meaning brands will get immediate insights into the tastes and habits of customers they’ve never served before.
For consumers, the Olo App is designed to be “one remote control app for my entire food ordering life,” said Olo founder and CEO Noah Glass in an interview. They will be able to “pin” their favorite brands to their homepage and get real-time updates on their order, for instance.
The app is intended to occupy a middle ground between restaurants’ own branded mobile apps and third-party marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats, leveraging Olo's position as the online ordering provider for more than 800 restaurant brands. Olo believes the app will provide brands with the best of both worlds—the reach and selection of a marketplace, and the data access and lower costs of first-party ordering.
That's why it's calling the new channel second-party ordering.
“Second party means brands unifying around an experience, and then as it relates to guests, sharing the guest data in an effort to make for a better experience in a way that benefits all the brands,” he said.
The app will offer both pickup and delivery, with delivery being handled by third-party providers. Restaurants will have the option to pass the delivery fee along to customers.
The app will initially be open only to restaurants currently using Olo, but will soon be available to non-Olo restaurants as well, Glass said.
“We want this to become something that is an industry standard of, everybody can list, and everybody gets that same deal of one-click acquisition, network-level data, and you’re not gonna pay a commission on these orders,” he said.
The app builds upon a technology Olo launched a couple of years ago called Borderless (now Olo Accounts). This gave customers a single, passwordless login to any Olo-powered restaurant ordering system. Today, about 500 of Olo’s restaurant customers offer the capability, and about 40 million consumers have signed up for it.
Together, Olo Accounts and the Olo App make up a new product suite the company is calling Olo Network.
Olo is a household name for restaurant operators, but not so much for consumers. When it comes to getting people to download and use yet another restaurant app, Glass said that group of 40 million Borderless users gives it a good starting point, because they’re already familiar with Olo and have opted into the network.
As for getting the word out beyond that, don’t expect to see an Olo commercial on TV anytime soon. Glass said the company is taking a more organic approach to adoption.
“What’s nice is that the restaurants tell their guests about the platform, and that helps us to acquire guests into the network, and ... more guests on the network is good for everybody in the network,” he said.
And how do restaurants feel about being listed alongside some of their rivals in a single app? According to Sean Thompson, VP of IT for Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, they’re used to it.
“We’ve already gotten over ourselves with that” on the third-party delivery marketplaces, he said. “So why not do one where it’s somebody like Olo who’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, we are all frenemies.’”
Steve Smyth, director of restaurant technology at Taco John's, agreed, noting that the industry already has a spirit of working together and helping each other.
"I think Olo's kind of taking that to the next level and saying, you know what? Here's the power of having all this in one app. What can happen?"
Thompson added that he thinks the app is “a great move.” “It’s a nice little extra,” he said. “It’s another channel that guests can get to.”
Glass unveiled the app on stage Tuesday at Olo’s annual customer conference, Beyond4. The app will go live later this year.
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