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Olo

August 18, 2021

Restaurants Are ‘Always Blamed’ When It Comes to Bad Delivery. Here’s How Tech Can Help

Who is responsible when something goes wrong with delivery?

A succinct-yet-apt answer to that question recently came from fast casual chain Wow Bao’s President and CEO Geoff Alexander, who spoke at The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit this week: “As the restaurant brand, you are always blamed.”

If you’ve ordered via third-party delivery with any frequency, you’ve likely dealt with the following scenario: The order is late or does not arrive. The customer calls the delivery service and gets an automated response. The customer calls the restaurant itself, who may not know where the food is because it left the the building ages ago. If and when the meal finally arrives at the consumer’s door, it will be cold, soggy, dry, or all of the above. It’s usually not DoorDash, Uber Eats, or any other delivery service that gets blamed for these problems. 

By way of example during the event, Alexander brought up Fargo, North Dakota, where Wow Bao operates one of its dark kitchen locations. For these kitchens, other restaurants cook some of the Wow Bao brand’s signature items and sell them on the usual third-party delivery channels as a way to make incremental revenue. Wow Bao has about 350 dark kitchen locations around the country right now, with a “moonshot goal” of reaching 1,000 by the end of the year. 

Brand integrity is always something to watch for with these kitchens. “When an issue happens there, it’s not Wow Bao,” Alexander explained at the event. “It’s somebody running one of our dark kitchens. And [the food is] delivered via one of three or four delivery platforms. I get the phone call. Wow Bao corporate gets the phone call, we get hit on Instagram or social or Google Reviews. That whole brand transfer hast to be the most guarded and respected piece by the brand itself and by the operator to work together. At the end of the day, the way that guest is handled is what’s going to decide if the guest is going to come back and who they’re gonna tell.”

As to how tech can help restaurants guard this brand transfer, the other panelists pointed to tools that can optimize operations. Ava Ghaiumy, Delivery Hero’s regional director for global foodservice operations, pointed out that there is “almost no bigger KPI than speed.” Her company, which is investing heavily in various tech initiatives, is working on things like improved dispatching and rider-tracking features that can help with speed of service when it comes to delivery.  

Olo’s Marty Hahnfeld, who was also on the panel, said it’s all about “precision in operations.” That includes improving order accuracy, making sure menus are up to date across all ordering channels at all times, and that pricing is correct on those channels as well. Olo offers its Dispatch service that allows restaurants to order directly from a restaurant’s own website or mobile app. Though in most cases, there is still a reliance on third-party delivery to handle the last mile.

At the end of the day. the most important technology to keeping brand integrity intact may be one that’s been around for quite some time: the POS integration.

Such an integration connects, among other things a restaurant’s main POS system with the many different channels through which customers buy meals nowadays, including third-party delivery. Whereas in the old days (two years ago), delivery services provided an external tablet and restaurant staff manually key’d in orders to the main POS system, more restaurants are now directly connecting delivery to that main system. Panelists were unanimous in their belief that this is an extremely important technology when it comes to improving order accuracy, timing, and a generally smoother experience for everyone.  

February 22, 2021

Restaurant Tech Company Olo Files to Go Public

Restaurant SaaS platform Olo filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC late Friday and hopes to raise $100 million in an initial public offering. A representative for Olo confirmed this news to The Spoon today.

Olo is best known for its software platform that consolidates digital orders coming from different channels (web, kiosk, mobile, etc.) into a single ticket stream for the restaurant. Founded in 2005 in NYC, It was one of the original companies to help restaurants eradicate the so-called “tablet hell” scenario for restaurants. Prior to companies like Olo, staffers would have to manually input information from, say, the tablet processing Grubhub orders into the restaurant’s main POS system. 

The company has added its Dispatch service, which helps restaurants process delivery orders from their own websites and mobile apps. Another service, Rails, helps restaurants manage their relationships with third-party delivery providers, including negotiating a restaurant’s preferred providers and pricing strategy.

“Consumers today expect more on-demand convenience and personalization from restaurants, particularly through digital channels, but many restaurants lack the in-house infrastructure and expertise to satisfy this increasing demand in a cost-effective manner,” states the S-1 filing. “Our platform and application programming interfaces, or APIs, seamlessly integrate with a wide range of solutions, unifying disparate technologies across the restaurant ecosystem.” 

The Olo platform is specifically suited to restaurant brands with multiple locations. Among the companies customers are Five Guys, Wing Stop, Shake Shack, Denny’s, The Cheesecake Factory, Jamba Juice, Dairy Queen, and many others well-known names in the restaurant biz.

The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, has only heightened the urgency for restaurants to organize their off-premises orders (takeout, delivery, drive-thru, etc.) to increase the speed and efficiency at which those can be fulfilled. Olo said in its S-1 filing that in response, the company “reprioritized” its strategic roadmap “to address the most important solutions for [its] customers.” Notably, that has included takeout and curbside options.

Currently, Olo works with about 64,000 individual restaurant units across 400 brands. In its filing, Olo said it processed $14.6 billion in gross merchandise value in 2020.

This is the second major piece of news around restaurant tech IPOs today. Earlier this morning, the Wall Street Journal noted that restaurant-management platform Toast could go public in 2021 with a $20 billion valuation. 

For Olo, no price or timeline has been set as of right now.     

January 24, 2021

Top 3 Tech Trends for QSR Redesigns

This is the web version of our weekly restaurant tech newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

The “next-generation” restaurant format isn’t new, as QSR brands like Dunkin’ and McDonald’s can attest. But the restaurant industry’s sudden and in many ways irrevocable shift to off-premises formats in 2020 certainly increased both the number of restaurants revamping their store formats and the speed at which they are doing so.

Those revamps come in many forms and features: BK’s floating kitchens, Applebee’s adding drive-thru lanes, everyone’s near lack of dining room space, to name a few.

And since everyone from Sonic to Del Taco seems to be announcing some kind of format revamp — physical, virtual, or both — these days, I thought it’d be worthwhile to round the top common denominators up to get a hint at which tactics will likely become widespread across the restaurant biz in the near future.

Herewith, are my top three QSR redesign trends:

More Curbside Pickup Spots

Digital order/payment capabilities are a must-have for restaurants now, and this technology coupled with curbside pickup is something we will see a lot more of in the near future. 

For many restaurants, offering curbside pickup options is cheaper than building out a drive-thru lane and window. Outside of the technology, all a restaurant needs is to dedicate a few parking spots close to the building, some signage, and a staff person to run the orders out. Bigger brands may have the money to retrofit their existing stores with drive-thru, but for many mid-size and smaller restaurants, curbside is a more realistic option when it comes to fulfilling more off-premises orders.

For customers, digitally enhanced curbside pickup is increasingly seen as a cheap, fast alternative to delivery, which is getting more expensive for customers. (More on that in the next section.) 

Curbside tech itself is getting some improvements to make the method faster and more efficient, Panera’s geofenced curbside initiative from 2020 being the obvious example. While efforts like these are the anomaly right now, more chains will adopt them and other curbside tech in the coming months.

Drive-thrus, Cruise-thrus, Chipotlanes

On the other hand, those that can swing the cost of adding a drive-thru should do so. 

Some chains, like Applebee’s, are testing out the drive-thru concept for the first time. Chipotle is another good example of a restaurant chain that never offered the format before and has now shifted its entire strategy to accommodate more “Chipotlanes.” Ditto for Sonic, a restaurant better known for drive-ins than drive-thrus, and Pokeworks forthcoming “cruise-thru.”

Others, like QSRs that have always offered drive-thru, are expanding the format. Literally. Double, and triple drive-thru lanes, with some dedicated solely to mobile orders. are becoming the norm at the KFCs, Dunkin’s, and BKs of the world.

The common denominator of this common denominator is that tech is integrated into most of these drive-thru concepts, whether that’s through accommodating more mobile app orders or uses of artificial intelligence to improve order accuracy and upselling.

Mobile-Only Zones and Dedicated Delivery Areas

As anyone who’s been in a drive-thru line lately knows, restaurants are struggling to fulfill the influx of off-premises orders quickly. Many restaurants are addressing this by dedicating certain drive-thru lanes to mobile orders and for delivery drivers picking up orders. Some, like Dunkin’, have done this for years. Others, like Shake Shack, are new to the concept. Still others, namely Pokeworks, have taken the concept one step further and do not accommodate onsite ordering in the drive-thru lane at all.

Meanwhile, to keep third-party delivery drivers waiting on orders from taking up all the curbside spots, many restaurants are also building dedicated areas for delivery pickups. Del Taco, for example has both dedicated drive-thru lanes and pickup shelves for delivery orders.

None of the redesigns discussed above have been widely deployed yet; we can expect more of that in 2021. At that point, new standards for store designs will start to trickle down from the major brands listed here to mid-sized and smaller ones, further cementing the role of off-premises across the restaurant industry.

Postmates: the Latest Delivery Service to Raise Its Prices Post-Prop 22

After saying prices would remain the same for customers following the successful passing of Proposition 22, Postmates has now raised those same prices as high as $2.50 per order.

Postmates’ about-face follows similar price increases from Uber and DoorDash, according to a report from Eater San Francisco. It’s also a contradictory to the tagline these companies were pitching in the ramp-up to the Nov. 3 election—that Prop. 22 passing would allow them to continue operating in California and that prices for customers would not increase.  

Prop. 22 passed in a 58 to 42 percent vote, which allows gig-economy the aforementioned companies to continue classifying their workers as independent contractors. Translation: Uber et al. do not have to pay worker benefits like healthcare, workers comp, and sick leave.

The delivery companies said that they would offer their own benefits package to workers that include a stipend for healthcare. The recent price hikes appear to be geared towards paying for those benefits. For example, the Postmates website calls it “the California Driver Benefits fee” and says that it “helps us fund the new benefits offered to drivers thanks to the passing of Prop 22.” 

All of this feels pretty inevitable, to be honest. After all, one could hardly expect companies that are now infamous for predatory and dishonest business practices to subsidize workers’ benefits out of their own pockets. It’s just a shame more voters didn’t reach that conclusion before clicking “Yes” on the Prop. 22 measure.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Part of the plan President Joe Biden has issued to combat coronavirus includes providing clear, national guidelines for restaurants on how and when they can operate. Clear national guidelines would be developed around the safety of workers as well as things like restaurant capacity restrictions.

Olo partnered with customer feedback tech platform Tattle in order to improve the process of collecting restaurant guest feedback for off-premises orders. Tattle will integrate with the Olo platform to provide restaurant guests with a digital survey they can take after ordering from a restaurant.

Pathogen control tech company UV Angel has partnered with McDonald’s franchisees in Texas and Illinois to equip locations with proprietary ultraviolet light surface and air technology. UV Angel says its tech targets pathogens at the room level (as opposed to at the building level), which the company say is more effective in fighting airborne and surface-borne bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

January 12, 2021

Grubhub to Offer In-Car Ordering Through Fiat Vehicles

In-vehicle tech company Lear Corporation announced today that its Xevo software businesses has partnered with Grubhub to bring food ordering capabilities to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). Drivers will be able to order food from the third-party delivery service via an app on FCA’s Uconnect Market platform. 

FCA vehicles will be the first to offer Grubhub’s service as an in-vehicle feature. Once signed into their Grubhub account via the in-car system, customers can order ahead and pay for their meal on the go before picking it up from the restaurant. Users will also be able to reorder past meals market as “favorites.”

An additional feature lets users discover “new favorites,” too. If a customer is driving by a restaurant from which theY have never ordered, they can tap a button that will forward the restaurant’s menu to their email. Needless to say, drivers can’t browse the menu of a new restaurant while actually driving the car. 

Given restaurant tech’s current focus on making the customer meal journey speedier and more efficient, adding order-ahead and pay features to the car seems like a no-brainer. Grubhub may be the first third-party delivery service to land in the car, but the Xevo deal is not the first go-around for in-vehicle restaurant service. In 2019, Domino’s teamed up with both Xevo and Chevrolet for in-vehicle ordering deals. Also in 2019, BMW partnered with Olo to make food ordering directly available from BMW vehicles. 

FCA’s Uconnect platform, meanwhile, is available on 2019 and 2020 models of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram vehicles, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Grubhub is available soon to those drivers as well.

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. 

October 4, 2020

Contactless: ‘Easier Said Than Done’

Welcome to the Spoon’s weekly restaurant tech roundup. To subscribe, go here.

Achieving a contactless restaurant experience when it comes to the drive-thru lane is easier said than done, according to QSR Magazine’s 2020 Drive-Thru Study, released today in partnership with SeeLevelHX.

Every year, QSR Magazine’s study looks at various aspects of drive-thru performance, from speed of service to order accuracy to the effectiveness of digital menu boards. This year’s study includes all of those things as well as some elements that wouldn’t have made it in there if not for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The so-called contactless restaurant experience is one of them. If you follow the restaurant biz or are a regular reader of The Spoon, you’ll know that restaurant tech companies large and small have lately been championing software that enables contactless ordering and payments. Instead of a customer and staffer passing a credit card back and forth, guests order and pay from their own mobile phones. 

That goes some distance in keeping unwanted germs at bay, but as we’ve said before, there’s no such thing as a truly contactless restaurant experience right now. And as QSR’s data suggests, there’s no such thing as a truly contactless drive-thru, either. 

The survey found that 80.1 percent of all drive-thru orders were handed to the customer directly by the employee. In 16.4 percent of the cases surveyed, the order was placed on a tray. Rounding out the math, 1.3 percent of orders were placed on a window, and 2.2 percent were labeled “other.” Use your imagination. 

QSR’s survey found that 78.1 percent of employees wear gloves at the drive-thru window, while 91.3 percent wear masks. But the survey’s basic conclusion to all of this is that contactless “proves easier said than done” when it comes to the drive-thru lane.

Unlike a physical restaurant space that can be altered to make room for pickup shelves or lockers, there’s not much in the way of architectural adjustments a drive-thru window can absorb that would make much sense. And actually, one could argue that too many alterations done in the name of contactless service would just confuse things, slow down service, and impair order accuracy. 

If the restaurant industry wants a truly contactless drive-thru experience, it’s going to have to do some major overhauling when it comes to the design of the drive-thru process. Burger King hinted at this a while back with its new restaurant prototype that includes a conveyor belt system for retrieving food and a good deal of re-architecting of the physical store layout, among other things. That’s the first of what will likely be dozens more examples over the next year of what the drive-thru of the future will look like. As to whether the industry can ever achieve one that’s truly contactless, stay tuned.

Device of the Week: TableYeti’s Virtual Tip Jar

Besides having the best company name I’ve heard of in a while, hospitality payments company TableYeti also makes a virtual tip jar product called the “Tap to Tip BOX.” The device, which is powered by TIPJAR’s software, can be mounted to a wall, placed on a countertop or stationed at any other location in a bar or restaurant that’s highly visible to customers. 

On its website, UK-based TableYeti says the BOX is meant to replace TRONC, which is the tipping pool system used in many bars, cafes, and restaurants around the country. Essentially it’s the digital version of the big jar of cash you’ll find next to many cash registers at eating and drinking establishments. Instead of dropping a few bills into the jar, you tap a credit card.

It’s a compelling product in this day and age when so much of the restaurant biz is going digital. It also comes at a time when the concept of a virtual tip jar is a little more widely known, thanks to various efforts to help restaurant industry workers during the height of lockdown. TableYeti’s product joins multiple other iterations of this idea, not just in the U.K. but all over the world.

TableYeti’s BOX is only available to U.K. businesses at the moment, though a U.S. equivalent is bound to surface at some point in the near future as restaurants get further digitized and cash gets increasingly less popular.

More Restaurant News

Food ordering platform Olo this week launched Serve, a revamped version of its ordering platform restaurants can use to consolidate order flows and manage their digital storefronts. The redesigned platform, which Olo says enables faster ordering and checkout and higher conversion rates, is available to all restaurant customers using the Olo platform.

Fast-casual chain Fazoli’s put something of a twist on the dark kitchen/virtual restaurant concept this week. The chain had been using some of its restaurants as dark kitchens to test a delivery-only chicken wing product. Said product has proven to be so popular Fazoli’s said this week it will now go on the chain’s regular brick-and-mortar menu. Which just goes to show you that the definitions of “ghost kitchen” and “dark kitchen” continue to evolve.

Taco Bell just launched the “Taco Gifter” on its website and mobile app that lets users, uh, gift tacos to one another. Pick an item, pay for it, and T. Bell will generate a unique URL the recipient can use to retrieve the order. Somehow I suspect this will be popular with those who need last-minute gift ideas for the holidays.

February 14, 2020

Week in Restaurants: Regulators Are Coming for Delivery, Denny’s and Yelp Team Up

Happy Valentine’s Day, food techies. If you haven’t run away to Las Vegas yet to get hitched at a Denny’s, there’s still time.

But speaking of Denny’s, the chain announced a new pilot with Yelp this week. Elsewhere in the restaurant world, Subway is now using Olo’s technology to handle delivery orders, and if you want more intel on the demise of Zume’s vision for mobile pizza kitchens, read on.

Yelp Pilots a New Feature to Measure In-Store Visits

Yelp this week launched Yelp Store Visits, a metric meant to help restaurants and other stores measure how online activity on Yelp drives customer visits to physical locations. The opt-in tool is available to businesses with multiple locations and meant to help them increase foot traffic to their physical stores. The company also introduced Showcase Ads, which lets multi-unit brands highlight special deals and promotions via video ads to Yelp users. Denny’s piloted both tools in 2019 and saw positive results. 

Subway and Olo Partner for Integrated Delivery

Subway announced a partnership with Olo to integrate digital orders directly into its POS system, making it easier for the sandwich chain to process and fulfill off-premises orders coming from multiple sales channels. With Olo’s technology, orders coming from third-party services like Grubhub or Postmates go directly into the restaurant’s main POS system, removing the need for an employee to manually input the information into the ticket stream and lowering the risk of human error when it comes to order accuracy.

Regulation Is Coming for Third-party Delivery

It’s no secret that people are getting fed up with third-party delivery services’ Wild West tactics. Now regulators are stepping in, proposing legislation meant to check some of the practices companies like DoorDash and Grubhub employ that often don’t seem to benefit anyone but themselves. This week alone, California and Rhode Island introduced legislation, and Nation’s Restaurant News rounded up a few more states that are also taking third-party delivery to task, which could change the way the model operates in future. Read the full list here.

Inside the Fall of Zume’s Robot Pizza Delivery

Zume, a startup famous for its pizza-making robots, made headlines in January when it announced it was laying off 360 staff members and facing challenges securing more funding from investor Softbank. What happened to the once-promising startup? An article from Bloomberg Businessweek goes into the details of the startup’s evolution and how it landed in its current predicament.

January 10, 2020

Week In Restaurants: Grubhub Says It Is Not for Sale, McDonald’s Creates a New Tech Department

Taco Bell bucked industry trends this week by announcing it will test paying select managers at some company-owned locations $100,000, which is roughly double the average salary for restaurant managers. Between that, new vegan drinks from Starbucks, and a slew of other announcements, much happened in the world of restaurants this week. Here’s a wrap of a few other stories from ‘round the web:

Grubhub Says It Is Not for Sale

Reports surfaced earlier this week that Grubhub had hired financial advisors to explore a sale or acquisition — news that sent the troubled delivery company’s stock surging. However, a spokesperson for the company told the folks at Restaurant Dive today that “there is unequivocally no process in place to sell the company.” The spokesperson added that Grubhub believes there will be acquisition opportunities this year and that the company’s profitability “remains secure.”

McDonald’s Is Creating a New Tech Department

Meanwhile, if there were any doubts former CEO Steve Easterbrook’s sudden departure would stall the mega-chain’s tech ambitions, those should be sufficiently quelled by this week’s news. On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced it is creating a digital customer engagement team and the role of Chief Digital Engagement Officer. Lucy Brady, who has spent the last three years as SVP of corporate strategy and business development at McDonald’s, will step into the new role. Brady’s group formerly led the development of McDonald’s delivery program as well as the $300 million Dynamic Yield acquisition that happened last year. The new team will oversee digital ordering, personalization, payments, loyalty programs, and delivery, and report directly to newly appointed CEO Chris Kempczinski.

Olo Supposedly Planning a 2020 IPO

Olo is said to be planning a U.S. initial public offering for this year, according to a Bloomberg article that cited “people with knowledge of the matter.” The company’s software streamlines the process of adding delivery partners for restaurants, among other things, and has been steadily gaining popularity in the restaurant tech world over the past few years. Sources say Olo had interviewed potential advisors at the end of 2019 and could seek a valuation of $1 billion for an IPO. Olo itself declined to comment on the story.

Wow Bao Expands to the East Coast

Fast-casual Asian-food chain Wow Bao will expand to the East Coast, with three new locations set to open in the first quarter of 2020, according to an email sent to The Spoon. Wow Bao is known for its tech-centric approach to fast-casual that leverages Brightloom’s end-to-end tech stack for restaurants. Given that focus, which includes self-order kiosks, pickup cubbies, and digital ordering, it makes sense the chain’s new planned locations will be in airports, where super-speedy service for high volumes of people is the norm — or at least the norm restaurants aim for. Planned locations are for Dulles International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, and Raleigh-Durham International Airport, according to the press release. 


November 25, 2019

Olo and BMW Partner for In-car Restaurant Food Ordering

As the restaurant industry continues searching for ways to serve up off-premise meals at faster speeds, in-car ordering is one approach becoming more common. BMW is the latest automaker to join this conversation, having just partnered with restaurant-tech company Olo to make food ordering available directly from its vehicles.

According to an Olo press release, the two companies are currently running a pilot program for select BMW vehicles in the U.S. from 2015 onwards. BMW car owners can check their car’s compatibility with the new food ordering program and register for it on the BMW Labs site. 

Once the software is enabled in the vehicle, users can send orders to participating restaurants directly from their car, pre-configure favorite orders, and pay instantly. The system is similar to the one Domino’s currently has underway with Chevrolet: once a user links their restaurant account to it, they can order favorite meals via touchscreen on the car dashboard, re-order recent ones, pay via credit card (which is on file with the restaurant), and follow driving directions to the restaurant to retrieve their food.

As of now, you can’t browse menus or input payment information directly from your dash. While that’s certainly safer (I can barely pick a Spotify song on my dash without running the car off the road), it also limits what users can order and customize.

Two restaurant chains, Nektar Juice Bar and Portillo’s Hot Dogs, are the first to participate in BMW’s pilot program, and there are bound to be others that follow. With more Americans spending more time behind the wheel these days, in-car ordering provides yet-another channel through which restaurants can reach more people. It’s also potentially, though not totally, safer than someone using their phone while driving to order food. BMW isn’t alone here. As mentioned above, Chevy and Domino’s partnered this year to bring the Domino’s AnyWare platform to vehicles. GM’s Marketplace system has been in cars since 2017 and lets users order from Starbucks, Wingstop, and other chains.

BMW may have an advantage here in that its system is powered by Olo, which specializes in making the order process from third parties a simpler experience for restaurants and customers alike. That said, the in-car order concept as of right now is still pretty bare bones — for BMW and everyone else. Ultimately, though, that probably won’t stop your average non-foodie citizen from re-ordering their favorite pizza or hot dog on the way home from work, and for in-car ordering to become a regular part of the car experience in the future.

October 2, 2019

Google and Olo Partner to Give Restaurants More Control of Their Data

This week, Google announced a partnership with digital ordering platform Olo that will let restaurants offer pickup orders through Google Search and Maps, and Google Assistant without incurring high commission fees from third-party services or losing valuable customer data.

Restaurants use Olo to simplify the process of taking delivery and pickup orders from multiple third-party channels. Via Olo’s Rails technology, a restaurant can consolidate all those orders into a single ticket stream that goes directly through the business’ main POS system, eliminating the need for a human to manually input that information.

Previously, restaurants integrating with Google had to go through third-party services like Postmates, DoorDash, and Delivery.com. Users ordering food through Google would select meals via Maps, Search or Assistant, then be redirected to one of those third-party services to complete the transaction. While convenient for the user, restaurants still had to pay the high commission fees third-party services charge per order.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the new Google/Olo partnership directly integrates Rails into Google Search, Maps, and Assistant. That means Olo’s network of restaurants, which numbers over 70,000 at this point, can process orders via these channels without having to go through a third-party site. Restaurants not only get to keep the money they would have otherwise spent on commission fees, they also get to keep their customers’ data, which is one of the most valuable assets in the restaurant industry these days.

Currently, the deal applies only to pickup orders. Olo clients Checker’s and Portillo’s Hot Dogs are two chains working initially involved in this new partnership.

The deal is also one more push from Google towards becoming a major player in the food tech world, particularly in restaurants. Besides integrations with Olo and third-party delivery services, the search giant has also added menu recognition features to Google Lens, so a user can point their phone at a menu to highlight popular dishes, and offers a “popular dishes” feature to Maps. In May, Google created a virtual phone agent for small businesses like restaurants and gotten approval to make public drone deliveries. Google also has a delivery program in place with Olo’s rival platform, ChowNow.

For now, Google’s expansion across the restaurant business remains purely digital. Even so, one can’t help but wonder if the company would eventually explore brick-and-mortar initiatives, as well. For example, Google already runs and partners with coworking spaces; it could start doing a similar program for shared kitchens.

Regardless of whether something like that actually happens, Google is sure to keep pushing to become a vital player of the restaurant network.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated the Google/Olo deal applied to restaurant delivery orders.

September 6, 2019

The Week in Restaurant Tech: More POS Integrations, New Delivery Deals

Fall is just around the corner, which means we’re about to get inundated with headlines about pumpkin-spice lattes. And while the restaurant industry is seeing a bit of a sales slowdown at the moment, something that’s expected to continue through the last third of 2019, the space has no end of tech-centric developments happening week to week. Here’s a look at a few more pieces of restaurant tech news from the last few days.

Appetize Partners With Olo and Others for POS Integration

What’s the solution to having too much tech in the restaurant? More tech, obviously. This week, Playa Vista, CA-based POS maker Appetize announced new integrations with not one but three more pieces of restaurant tech software: Olo, which consolidates orders from multiple third-party channels, Punchh, who handles loyalty programs, and SynergySuite, a back-of-house inventory management solution. According to a press release, these additions will help restaurants to balance the many digital demands in the biz today: third-party delivery capability, loyalty programs, mobile order and payments, and back-of-house duties like inventory management.

Grubhub Launches Perks

Even as more restaurants talk about bringing customer loyalty back under their own roof, third-party delivery companies are countering that by adding new bells and whistles to retain users within their own apps and websites. This week, Grubhub launched Perks, an in-app feature that offers users more ways to earn loyalty points from restaurants via deals only available within the Grubhub app. Since the feature is actually integrated with restaurant loyalty programs, those rewards and points are all redeemable from the same account. However, to access all the free food on offer from the likes of Taco Bell, Red Lobster, and Smoothie King, customers have to use the Grubhub app.

Barclaycard and TouchBistro Join Forces to Improve Restaurant Payments

Another POS company, TouchBistro, announced a partnership with UK-based credit card and payments processor Barclaycard. TouchBistro will integrate Barclaycard’s payment solution into its iPad-based POS system for UK restaurants, making it easier for staff to split checks, and gratuities and process payments. For any restaurant-tech feature involving payments, the biggest benefit is that they cut down the amount of manual calculations and data entry workers have to do, which in theory reduces the risk of human error when it comes to keeping track of the numbers.

New Delivery Deals

In what was just another week in the world of delivery, numerous chains announced partnerships with third-party services. Casual dining chain Village Inn announced it’s now delivering via DoorDash; fast-food chain A&W also teamed up with the service, to deliver to nearly 400 locations across Canada. DoorDash didn’t grab all the headlines this week, though. As we covered in depth, McDonald’s is expanding its McDelivery program throughout NYC and the Tri-State area with Grubhub.

Intrigued? We’ll be talking restaurant tech at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit this October in Seattle. Grab your tickets here and come on down.

August 6, 2019

Waitr’s Partnership With Olo Underscores the Delivery Service’s Mainstream Ambitions

It was only a matter of time before companies started addressing the problem of how to help restaurants process third-party delivery orders without throwing an extra device or three at them, a situation otherwise known as “tablet hell.”

Right on the heels of a similar deal with Uber Eats, restaurant-tech platform Olo has teamed up with delivery service Waitr to do just that. According to a press release sent today, the two companies have partnered to allow direct integration of all Waitr/Bite Squad orders into a restaurant partners’ POS systems through Olo’s Rails technology.

Rails transmits orders coming from third-party sales channels like delivery apps directly into a restaurant POS system. This is in stark contrast to how restaurants have typically taken orders from third-party delivery apps. Historically, a restaurant would have to designate someone on staff to manually input those orders from a tablet provided by the delivery service into the main POS system — the aforementioned tablet hell scenario. As I wrote in January, when Olo nabbed an $18 million investment, “Olo doesn’t compete with third-party delivery services; it more or less partners with them, so DoorDash or Grubhub orders placed via Olo go right into the regular queue of tickets, without an employee having to manually input them.”

By partnering with Olo, Waitr will be able to offer all of its restaurant partners this kind of streamlined processing for delivery orders, which saves restaurants time, money, and, very basically, physical space in the restaurants.

Interestingly, Olo’s tech platform is typically aimed at larger chains: it counts Denny’s, Five Guys, and Chipotle among its growing list of customers. Waitr has up to this point focused on serving smaller U.S. cities and emphasizing the local aspect of its business. But the company recently became the center of a lot of bad press when it announced adjustments to its terms and fee structure for restaurants, which take a higher commission from restaurants with smaller sales volumes. In most cases those would be smaller, independent restaurants. While the new terms sparked protests in some of Waitr’s markets, they went through on August 1. Waitr hasn’t directly stated its focus has shifted to prioritizing bigger brands and restaurant partners, but as the restaurant biz goes, it’s typically the smaller shops who will have a hard time managing the new fee structure and may not be able to continue using Waitr’s service.

The partnership with Olo seems to further affirm that direction. “This direct connection into our partners’ order stream is delivering on our commitment to be the most valued partner for restaurants,” Waitr CEO Chris Meaux said in the press release statement. Apparently only if you’re Denny’s or Five guys, though.

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