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curbside

November 20, 2020

Olo Unveils New Restaurant Tech Features for Curbside, Dining Room

Curbside pickup is here to stay, and so too is the dining room, judging from restaurant tech startup Olo’s latest announcement. The company announced two new features this week aimed at smoother, more efficient service for off-premises orders. The new features include arrival notifications for curbside orders and order-ahead capabilities for dine-in guests, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Olo’s main businesses is to make the management of off-premises orders simpler and easier for restaurants. Its software funnels the orders coming from different sales channels (DoorDash versus social media versus an in-house kiosk) into a single ticket stream and directly into a restaurant’s main POS system. That means less juggling of tablets for the staff and a lower risk for mistakes, since humans aren’t manually keying in orders from a delivery service’s tablet to the POS. 

Eight months ago, that kind of streamlined management was a nice-to-have. Thanks to the pandemic, which has shuttered dining rooms across the country and forced the restaurant biz to lean on delivery and takeout, a platform like Olo’s is a must-have. But given the evolving needs of restaurants, no restaurant tech company should rest on its laurels right now. To stay valuable and relevant to restaurants, they too, need to evolve.

Olo appears to be doing just that with its new bundle of features. The need for speed when it comes to curbside pickup is well documented. Olo’s new feature is available as of now for restaurants using the company’s Expo tablet. When a customer arrives and hits an “I’m here” button, the system automatically notifies the restaurant. It’s not as automatic as, say, geofence-enabled curbside pickup, but it saves customers from having to dial an actual phone number and wait for a human to pick up.

The other big feature Olo released this week, it’s Dine-In Support, may get less use in the near term, though it’s a wise long-term strategy. The function allows customers to order and pay for meals they intend to eat in the dining room.

At one point, this particular technology felt superfluous, and at the moment, cities across the U.S. have closed down indoor dining so there isn’t a great need for it. But someday, we’ll be able to eat in an actual restaurant again, and by then, consumer preferences around speed, efficiency, and social distance will have been firmly embedded into their routines, even when it comes to restaurants. While there’s something a little depressing about a restaurant experience based solely on those factors, it’s inescapably the future for many. Seen in that light, Olo is an early mover in what will be a long-term behavior change. (Fellow restaurant tech company Allset is also a known leader in this area.)

The above features are both available right now, at no extra cost to existing Olo customers. 

April 4, 2020

Food Tech News: Grubmarket Acquires Boston Organics, Surplus Food App Karma Pivots to Delivery

Here are some things that have been making us feel good lately: pancakes on weekdays, video calls with family, and foodtech news.

We can’t help you with the first two, but we’ve got the latest lineup of foodtech-y stories ready to go. This week we rounded up stories about grocery e-commerce acquisitions, food waste service pivots, and curbside grocery pickup.

Grubmarket acquires Boston Organics
Grocery delivery service Grubmarket announced its acquisition of Boston Organics, an online farm-to-table delivery service, earlier this week. Boston Organics is the first east coast foothold for Grubmarket, which is based in San Francisco. According to a press release this acquisition is part of Grubmarket’s plans to expand nationwide. Over the past year alone, Grubmarket has acquired other artisanal grocery delivery services Doorganics and Eating with the Seasons.

Weis Market and Hannaford restart curbside grocery pickup
East coast grocery chains Weis Markets and Hannaford have restarted their curbside pickup services (via GroceryDive). Both retailers hit pause on curbside pickup in March as COVID-19 started spreading rapidly, but are resuming the service to cater to customers who want to avoid crowds in grocery stores. To minimize contact, cstomers are asked to remain in their vehicles during the pickup and store employees will not accept cash or paper coupons. Both grocers have stated that some items might not be available due to high demand.

Photo: Karma.

Surplus food resale platform Karma pivots to delivery + food boxes
Before COVID-19, Sweden-based startup Karma’s platform partnered with restaurants to sell their surplus food for pickup at a discount. Now, with many foodservice establishments struggling or closing down altogether, Verdict reports that Karma has pivoted to delivery. The service provides its own drivers to deliver cooked restaurant meals, priced at half off, to customers who place an order on the app. Deliveries are available on weekdays up until 7pm, within a 3km radius of the restaurant. Karma is also launching Karma Box, a fruit and vegetable box sourced from their foodservice partners.

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