Olo’s Time To Shine
With over 85 million consumers using Olo’s platform to order food, Noah Glass, the company’s founder and CEO, deserved to soak up the keynote spotlight at the Food On Demand show, held May 4-6 in Las Vegas. Below are a few takeaways Olo revealed from the stage.
On going public, Glass said it was mission critical to make a statement to the industry, one that affirmed Olo was in the industry for the long haul, and they were not looking to be acquired, and they had the capability to grow and scale. “I’m 40. I’m rather healthy. I’m planning on doing this for the rest of my career,” he said.
Glass emphasized it’s vitally important to have a direct relationship with consumers. He suggested if you don’t have data from every digital touchpoint, you can’t improve the customer experience, and cited this direct connection with customers as the table stakes driving force behind the company’s acquisition of Wisely.
On the acquisition of Omnivore, Glass mentioned technology fragmentation, and the vision to play across the entire tech landscape via one API. The Omnivore acquisition expanded Olo’s toolkit with open check capability, and broadened the company’s partner ecosystem from 200 to over 300.
On Olo Pay, Glass suggested that a one-click checkout is a win-win, driving basket conversion rate, cutting down on fraud and minimizing chargebacks. It was “too compelling not to pursue.”
On the second day of the conference, Olo’s chief customer officer Marty Hahnfeld spoke assuredly about digital hospitality, using the analogy that Olo is “bringing the entire circus under one tent, solving for a hundred little edge cases.” On stage with three happy Olo customers, Hahnfeld stressed listening to restaurant partners when things are not going optimally, and tapping software to make it better. “That is the roadmap,” he confirmed.
The Olo team was united around unlocking digital hospitality opportunities and enabling brands to understand customer lifetime value, which Glass considers a north star marketing metric that should inform every facet of the enterprise.
