Latest / Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence / Olo Aims to Digitize All Restaurant Transactions

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Olo Aims to Digitize All Restaurant Transactions · Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Tech Disruptors Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Callon,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the senior Restaurant and Food Service analyst at b I.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This episode will also be simulcast to our restaurant pod,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Chopping it Up by Bloomberg Intelligence on Spotify. Today's guest
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: is Noah Glass, CEO and founder of Olo, the company
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: powering the digitization of the restaurant industry. It's working with
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: eighty four thousand restaurants across more than six hundred brands,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and it's serving eighty five million guests a year. No
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: small feet in an industry that has been notoriously slow
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to adopt technology. Thanks for doing like than so much
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for having me. You know, I was surprised to see
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Olo listed on the n y s E and not
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the NASDAC. Maybe I'm out of the loop here, but
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: when I started my career as a day trader in
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: all the tech companies listed on the NAT well, I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: guess this is just the product of the fact that
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: my first apartment in New York City when I moved
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: here in two thousand three, was on Wall Street. I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: lived at forty five Wall Street, and so I walked
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: past the New York Stock Exchange every day, and I
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: just couldn't get over that beautiful banner and in the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: front hanging from all those pillars, and that visual was
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: with me every day from the early days of OLO. No,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I never really thought that we would get to the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: point of being a public company and getting an opportunity
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to list on either exchange. So it's a great honor
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to have that option. It's a high class problem, um,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: but particularly cool because OLO kind of started in that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: apartment in the earliest days, back in August of two
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: thousand three, if you can believe that. Wow. So alright,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So first of all, it's a yeah, that's a beautiful building.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And I worked on sixty seven wall in two thousand
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: three to about two thousand seven, so I'm sure we
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: walked past each other on the street at some point,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: uh during those years. For our listeners that may not
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: be familiar with OLO, what are the core products that
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: really fueled its pre I p O growth? So pre
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I p O I would say OLO is best known
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: for actually what the name is the acronym for. It's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the acronym for on line ordering O l OH, and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: it kind of actually dates the term in that acronym
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: itself because it was at the time when online was
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: two different words, kind of the AO l era. So
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: it's been around online ordering as a concept for a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: long time, although the company started in two thousand five,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: but that was at that time really the the industry
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: accepted term for online ordering, and that's how we got started.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So it was letting guests order and pay before they
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: arrived at the restaurant, mainly for take out. Some restaurants
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: in the early days also used it for delivery and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: then skip the line when they arrived, collect their order
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and be on their way um before the I p O.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: In maybe the four to five years running up to it,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: there was this other big leg of growth as we
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: expanded into offering delivery on a national scale, and that
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't delivery in the way that I was used to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: delivery from being a seventeen year old pizza delivery driver
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: uh growing up, or in the way these early restaurants
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: were using OLO and doing their own livery. Rather, it
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: was tapping into a network of on demand delivery service providers,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and we made that possible through a product called Dispatch,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: which basically tied all these different service providers into a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: network and made that accessible through a single ap I call.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: So a brand that was using OLO for just take
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: out could now also offer delivery to guests and still
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: let those guests order through the brand's own website or app,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: all without having to hire their own delivery fleet, but
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: instead by tapping into this on demand pool of drivers.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: The third big product that we came to market with
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen was enabling brands to syndicate out
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: their content, their menus, their price list out to the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: third party marketplaces like the door Dashes and the uber
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Eats and the grubhubs of the world, and then have
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: those orders not come into different tablets sitting on the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: counter that somebody would have to watch and manage, but
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: all into the same single stream, into the point of sale,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: into the kitchen. And that product is called rails, So
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: really ordering it solving, Yeah, we lovingly call that tablet hell. There.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: There are incredible photos from the twenty era where you'd
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: walk into restaurants and you still see this even and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: they have five six different tablets sitting next to the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: point of sale, all ringing, all flashing, and restaurant operators
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: have to pay somebody to literally just watch the tablets
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and re key those orders into the point of sale
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: and all of that goes away and get simplified with
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that rails product bring it all into the point of sale.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Very cool. I'd like to dive into dispatch just a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: little bit more. Can you talk about the bidding process
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: with delivery providers, how it's benefiting your customers and what
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: do they value most? Is it the prices at the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: time UH service ratings or is there something else and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and doesn't vary by restaurant. Let's say first and foremost
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: would brands value about dispatch and what it enables is
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that they can take delivery order through their own platform.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So instead of it coming from a restaurant delivery marketplace
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: where you know, the consumer is placing the order there
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and the brand is getting no data about who that
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: guest is, the guest is ordering directly from the brand,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: so the brand is collecting that valuable guest data. That's
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: going to be a theme, I'm sure over the rest
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: of our conversation, so we'll come back to it, um.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: But it's really about meeting the guests needs directly through
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: their own channels. So if somebody says, hey, I Mike
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to come to the restaurant to collect it.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I want it to be delivered to me. The brand
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: can say yes, and that's super valuable in and of itself.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: The idea that it's network, the idea that we have
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: multiple delivery service providers basically gives that brand resiliency and
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: redundancy in a little bit of pricing power built into
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: what's kind of like a micro auction if you think
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: about it. So, there was a great lending Tree commercial
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: that I remember from many years back, and the tagline
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: was lending Tree, When banks compete, you win, and a
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: little bit of this is the same thing with delivery providers.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: It's when delivery providers compete, you win. When you're able
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to tap into not one, but all of the delivery
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: service providers and all of the delivery professionals who are
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: out there working as couriers for the different delivery service providers,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it's much more likely that you're going to find the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: nearest available driver who can come and collect that order
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: fastest and delivered to the guest fastest. As a result,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and time is money. Fastest often correlates with the lowest cost,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the lowest bid on what it will cost that delivery
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: courier to collect the order and deliver to the guest.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: So it's been an amazing thing. What I mentioned, I
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: used to work in pizza delivery when I was in
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: high school, and I remember what great looked like then
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: was somebody calls in an order and you get the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: pizza to them thirty minutes or less. That was kind
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: of like the gold standard for delivery Domino's popularized. I
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: didn't work for Domino's, work for an independent pizza shop,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: but that's at the bar. Everybody expected thirty minutes. If
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you can hit that, awesome. The problem is the delivery
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: drivers going out with three, four, five different deliveries all
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: in one batch. They're routing their way around. It doesn't
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: always get delivered based on first in, first out. It's
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: getting delivered based on what's convenient based on the other deliveries,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: So it was hard to hit that thirty minute kind
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: of promise. Um. The beauty of the dispatch model is
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: it is a point to point delivery model. So the
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: courier is coming to collect one order and then deliver
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: that one order. We know how long the food takes
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: to prep based on an understanding of the historical analysis
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of how long meals take to prep and what the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: restaurant has shared with us. So if we know the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: drivers ten minutes away from drive time to arrive at
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the restaurant and the food takes seven minutes to prep,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: we can send the driver wait three minutes, fire that
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: order directly into the kitchen, the drivers arriving right when
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the food is ready and fresh, and then on average, nationally,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: month to month, we usually hover somewhere between eleven and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: thirteen minutes from store to door. As we say, so,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it just opens up a whole lot of different varieties
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of food that wouldn't be delivered well with that thirty
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: minute time horizon. But if you can finish that delivery,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: finish that order being prepped and at that make time,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: then have twelve minutes on average, let's say, for that
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: where then get in the hands of the guests and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: then you have food in mouth that magical moment. It
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: just makes delivery a much higher h quality experience for
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the guests and it shows well for the brand. Yeah,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: it's great. I'd imagine it's a big boon to guests satisfaction.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, there are times when a guest just
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: wants or needs delivery, they just aren't in a need state.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: We're going to the restaurant makes sense, however convenient it
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: is to collect the order. So the ability to pay
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: for delivery and have somebody else liked it and take
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it from the restaurant to you is a great thing,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and it opens up a lot of business opportunities for
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: restaurants that didn't prior to dispatch play in the delivery realm. Yeah,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: it's almost like a democratization a bit, right, because I
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: know a lot of restaurants. Independent restaurants can't even get
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: insurance for drivers, right, So so I think this is
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: UM definitely something that that's smaller chains and independence can benefit.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: That's right. How the company's products weite evolve with the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Wisely acquisition. So Wisely was in November of twenty one.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It was the first acquisition that OLO did, not just
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: as a public company, but in our entire history up
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: until that point, so we were operating for about sixteen
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and a half years, never done an acquisition. UM We've
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: been working with Wisely as a partner. We have a
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: rich partner ecosystem of other restaurant technology providers, over three
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: hundred of them today and it means that we're able
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: to have a really cool vantage point and see those
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: solutions that are really helping to meet our restaurant customers needs.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: And you know, we got conviction with Wisely that this
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: was a platform that was really helping restaurant brands to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: d anonymize not just every transaction coming through oh Loo,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: but every interaction that they were having with the guest,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: and it was pulling all of those into a guest
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: data platform, um a guest data platform or a customer
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: data platform as it's called in the sort of larger
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: horizontal technology space. You know, you you see examples of
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: that in companies like Braise or Emparticle or Segment that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Twilio acquired, but for the restaurant vertical and the reason
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: why we call it a guest data platform is because
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: restaurants called their customers guests, and so we thought that
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: sort of helped to explained that this was a customer
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: data platform for restaurant. You know, this, we believe Wisely
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Suite was the foremost solution, and so we felt like
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: we're in a moment in time when restaurants understand how
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: valuable first party data is and it's more difficult for
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: restaurants to use different forms of advertising that don't require
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: first party data. So helping them to harness the power
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: first party data, really understand who that guest is and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: ultimately understand what the lifetime value of that guest is
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: is going to be just a step change in what
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: restaurant marketers are able to do. We just came to
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: believe that Wisely was the best platform out there to
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: do it. I want to say, and this is important
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: for me to say whenever we launch a new product
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: or acquire a new company, that OLO is committed to
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: being an open platform. So while we have three partners
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: today and we acquired Wisely, which had been a partner,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: we still work with many other marketing tech platforms, and
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: different restaurant customers of ours will say I want to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: work with that one. I think that's better at meeting
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: my needs. That's fine. Were We are thrilled to be
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: an open platform and to be agnostic between those two things.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: We do think that Wisely is a great platform and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: helping to join transactional data that we see in OLO
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: back to understanding who every guest is and d anonymizing
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: those transactions to build that profile so you can better
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: personalize the guest experience, better speak to and market to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that guest, and use it to inform every facet of
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: your business. Is really what that acquisition was all about. Yeah,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: very cool. I mean what we're seeing with the publicly
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: traded restaurant chains that we cover is, you know, this
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: is still in the early innings, and yet it's it's
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: providing a much better r O Y than just dumping
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a ton of money onto TV or radio. And uh,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: it really is where the puck is moving. Um, you know,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: can you talk about how you know? And actually before
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I get to that, also to the fact that you're
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: open source and have really kind of pushed some of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the other POS systems out there to become open source.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I think is one of the major disruptions that I
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: think your company has has influence in this industry. I
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: think that's right. I mean in two thousand eight, nine ten,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: we started to do the work of integrating into point
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: of sales systems and what we came upon was this
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: sort of legacy thinking of closed platforms, walled gardens point
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: of sale companies saying who is this startup ol and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: why would I let them integrate into our platform. And
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: we're lucky that the restaurant brands came to our defense
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: support and said, no, we want OLO to integrate, and
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: we think they do the best job of this point
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: solution of online ordering. UM, so open up, let them integrate,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and we were able to integrate one by one into
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: all of the major enterprise restaurant point of sale systems.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And that's important because I think a lot of people
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: don't realize this, but many of the large restaurant brands
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: are fragmented from a technology standpoint when it's not guest
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: facing technology, when it's a restaurant operator facing technology like
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: point of sale. Oftentimes you have two, three, four different
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: point of sale platforms that are being used within the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: same brand. And yet for online ordering, where an online
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: ordering app that's guest facing technology, it needs to work
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the same on top of every one of those point
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: of sale platforms, and they're not interoperable with one another
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: OLO because we're not a point of sale platform. But
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: where this layer on top that is the guest facing layer,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: can then integrate with all of these enterprise point of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: sale companies and technology stacks and provide that universal, uniform
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: guest experience on top, and then we said to all
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: these technology partners, the three plus that are integrated into
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: a low today, you know, ride our platform to have
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that same sort of access into point of sale. And
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: we acquired a company in March of twenty two called
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Omnivore that did that in an even bigger way than
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Below itself. Did not just with order injection, but also
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: with labor and scheduling and purchasing, an inventory and kitchen
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: display system integrations, and that's such a key part of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: our philosophy. We believe that an open platform is the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: foundation of innovation for the restaurant technology space, and that
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: letting a thousand flowers bloom on an open platform is
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: going to be best for the restaurant operator and best
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: for the restaurant guest. We will always be committed to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: being an open platform and big supporters of innovation in
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the restaurant tech landscape. Yeah. I think you're right. I
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: think that really sparked innovation in the space. Um, can
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: you talk about how Olo pay and one of your
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: latest technology disruptions, border lists also a contribute to data aggregation. Yeah,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna separate those two slightly. UM, let me first
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: talk about olo pay without the borderless context. Oli pay
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: is something that we announced around the time of our
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I p O and then really only went into general
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: availability with in the middle of But what olipay is,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: it's very similar to if you look at other commerce
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: platforms like Shopify and what they've built with shop pay,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: it's it's very similar. It is a digital first, integrated
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: payment platform that's embedded within the commerce platform itself. So
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: instead of us acting as a gateway into whatever the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: credit card processor is at the store, which is really
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: designed for card swipe experiences, olopa is digital first, so
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: it's embedded within our platform. It means that you know,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: just like I said, with a uniform layer that is
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: guest facing technology, payments becomes part of that uniform layer.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: You don't have disjointed experiences where you've used your credit
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: card to pay at store A within the brand, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: then you go to use it at store B, but
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: your card isn't on file because they use a different
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: payment processor. Instead, we keep that card on file. And
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: so as a result of that, and as a result
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of really thinking about the context of a digital transaction,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: we're able to do things that are both good for
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the guest experience like card on file, but are also
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: great for the operator experience, much much lower fraud as
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a result of monitoring e commerce fraud through our partnership
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: with Stripe, and also monitoring across the entire OLO platform
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to prevent fraud with a second filter um protection against chargebacks,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: reporting all being on the same dashboards that somebody can
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: do adjustments and refunds and chargeback contestations all in one place,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and just better authorization rates and better basket conversion rates
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that are really about being a digital first payment platform
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: stitched into the OLO commerce platform, so that's Olo pay.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: What we did with border lists really enhances ol o
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: pay and it has benefits beyond Oli pay as well.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: The idea of border list was passwords are a pain.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I haven't met a person in life who likes passwords
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: um both creating new accounts that require you to create
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a password, or logging into an account with a password,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: struggling to remember it, resetting it, etcetera, etcetera. What happens
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: because of passwords and all the friction that they introduce
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: is that people check out anonymously all of the time.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: And I'll admit that I do this on the traditional
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: olo checkouts that I come across, I'll just not sign in,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: not try to even remember my password, but just check
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: out anonymously. That's a bad thing for the guest experience,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and it's also a bad thing for the greater experience
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: on the guest side. I have to start from scratch.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I have to rebuild an entire order that I've ordered
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: in the past. I have to re enter credit card details,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I have to re enter my delivery address. It's a
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: delivery order. It's just a pain. It's a lot of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: additional key strokes and clicks, and it's every every key
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: stroke and click is friction. Friction is the enemy of commerce.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: On the operator side, if I'm checking out anonymously, there
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: is no ability for them to connect that transaction back
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: to my guest account and know anything about me. So
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the idea behind border this was how do we remove
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: passwords enable guests to sign in with their email address
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: and their mobile phone number, again taking a lot of
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: inspiration for what Shopify did with shop pay, and in
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: so doing have a better guest experience and have a
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: better operator experience in the form of helping them to
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: harvest that transactional data and get it into the guest
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: profile to better un understand that guest, and that's really
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: what we've done with Borderless. So we started this, we
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: announced it in the very beginning of Q three of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: last year. We had three pilot brands, and with statistically
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: significant amounts of data, what we've seen is typically it's
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: only thirty percent of guests that log into an account
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: on a transaction. With border Lists, we've inverted that, it's
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: been seventy six percent of guests that are logged in
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: that are authenticated and not anonymous, And again huge wind
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: for the guest experience and huge wind for the operator
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: being able to tie the majority now of its transactions
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: back into that guest data platform to better understand the guest,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: how to market to them, and how to think about
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: their business differently with that guest lifetime value as a
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: new true North metric for guiding their business decisions. So
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it's been an exciting um new innovation, our newest. The
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: other thing about Borderla, which is really special, is that
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: once a guest has created that linkage between email address
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and mobile number, that lives at the OLO platform level,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: it doesn't live at the individual brand level, and so
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the power of that is now they go to the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: next brand, they plug in that email address. We then
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: send a text to their mobile phone saying, Mike, is
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: this you. Once you enter in that six digit number,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: you're into that account. You have your card on file,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you might have other details like your delivery address on file.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So we've removed the friction from that experience, and there's
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a network effect in that of you know, a platform
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: that is benefiting all of the guests and all of
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the brand. So at the scale of four thousand restaurants
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: across six hundred brand experiences and on the other side
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: million restaurant guests, we think that's a really powerful value
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: proposition for the industry as a whole. Yeah, that's very cool.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I love that you're doing some pain points for not
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: only the restaurant customers but also the restaurant guests. Uh,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: that password is problem is a massive issue to your point.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't think anybody, there's anyone I know
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that that's uh satisfied with how that's handled. What drives
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: me crazy is when it's like a brand tells me
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I can't use any of my last five passwords, and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: so I know with certainty I'm gonna put something in
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that I'm never gonna remember, you know, And I go
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: through a process with some of these brands. It's like
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: every couple of months, I have to change the password,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and it's like maddening, you know. I couldn't agree more,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. Alright, So we talked about Wisely a bit.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: We talked about Omnivore. Uh. You have a strong balance sheet,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: almost four and fifty million of net cash. You know,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: do acquisitions continue to be a part of your growth
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: strategy and if so, what type of targets are you
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: looking at. I think we're always looking at ways to
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: drive more digital transactions to add more value to our restaurants.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: And that's the common thread behind you know, the Wise acquisition,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the Omitive Wore acquis Asian. We do have a lot
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of cash on the balance sheet, Whether we use that
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to build things organically or to acquire additional capabilities from
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the outside, you know, I think it's really a matter
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of what's going to help drive us further faster in
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: this ultimate ambition of kind of being the engine of hospitality.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And we now talk about our mission as being, you know,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: helping restaurants make every guest feel like a regular and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that's the common spirit behind all the things that we
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: do in the commerce engine, in the guest engagement engine,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: in the payments engine. So, I mean that's really how
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: we think about things. The latest thing that we've done
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: with our cash reserves is that we authorize a hundred
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: million dollar stock buy back of OLOUGH stock and UM.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I think that we believe is a good use of
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: capital on the balance sheet UM and conveys our our
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: confidence in the business and the position that we're in
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: going forward d percent. I think that's typically how I
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: look at it. Right when companies are doing share buy
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: backs and are accelerated share buy backs, that you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: they're sending a signal to the market that look, we
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: think our stock is cheap. And when we're putting our
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: money where our mouth is, UM, what are your what
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: are your organic growth levers? Well, I think you know,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: OLOW pay and Payments is certainly a big area of focus.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: You know, when we look at I believe we shared
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: in one it was about twenty billion dollars of g
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: m V growth Merchandise value or GPV gross payments volume
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: that went through the OLO platform. UM. That's a lot
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of volume, and you know, we believe that there's a
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: big payments franchise to build within OLO, and one that
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: is you know, meeting the needs of our restaurant customers.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: It's not something that we got into just because we thought, hey,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: this is a clever way of making revenue, additional revenue.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It really came out of this group that we have,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: our Product Advisory Council, which is made up of great
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: digital thinkers from across our restaurant customer base, and they
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: were identifying all the problems with have the legacy way
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: that payments worked for e commerce, and the problems that
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: restaurant operators and franchisees were facing and saying, you know,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: we think OLO has a role to play here to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: make this better for the guest experience and for the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: operator experience. Could you do something in payments. We went
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: out and struck a partnership with Stripe. We're really proud
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of that partnership and what we've built, you know, ol
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: O pay and what we've enhanced further with boider lists,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and we think there's there's so much room to go
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and grow on the payments side of things, and there's
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of room to grow with guest engagement as well,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and thinking about how do we I mean, to your point,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: it's still early, you still have I want to come
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: back to this great quote from Wanna Maker, who was
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a department store magnate, who said half of my advertising
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: is wasted. I just don't know which half. This is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: an industry that, you know, at a trillion dollars on
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: top line revenue. If you think about a three percent
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: ad fund fee as being a basic golden rule, that's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars in advertising spend that restaurants are spending
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: on pretty wasteful TV, radio, print, mass media forms of advertising,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: very difficult to track, a lot of wastage. And we
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: think that kind of channeling some of that toward personalized
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: marketing and kind of precision marketing when you know who
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that guest is and you know that they are a
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: high lifetime value guest is really smart. So there's a
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: lot that we can do going forward beyond what we've
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: already done with wisely, for such a large swath of
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the restaurant industry. Yeah, it's cool. It makes a lot
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of sense. I mean, people are walking around with a
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: billboard in their pocket, right, so it's a perfect place
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to to advertise out back, Jack in the Box, Carls Jr.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And Hard These are some of the large chains that
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: have recently transitioned away from homegrown systems and two OLO.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Is that the largest opportunity in your restaurant growth lever
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and is there upside if that trend continues to accelerate.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I think that is the thing that we point to
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: as the biggest source of competition. It's not some other
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: technology platform like OLO. It is restaurant brands who have
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: really out of necessity because they started doing this before
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: OLO was at scale and a viable alternative, built something
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: in house and then been stuck with having to maintain
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it and to keep it fresh and innovative and secure
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and high performance. That's really expensive to do. That's not
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a build it once and you're done. That is a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: build the car and keep filling it up with gas,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and this is very expensive gas. So we've seen a
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: lot of brands you named a bunch of this past quarter.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: We saw Ruby, Tuesday, Smash Burger, Zachsby's Uh, you mentioned
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Jack in the Box, all migrate off of homegrown platform
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and onto the OLO platform. And I think that is
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the trend. You know, We've had over a dozen such
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: brand migrations happened just since our I p O, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: it was a big reason for IPO. We wanted to
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: show that really is a viable option, that we have
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a strong balance sheet, that we have a profitable business,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that we have you know, great up time that anybody
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: can go and look at its status dot Olo dot
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: com and see in real time throughout our history how
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: secure and high performance and reliable our platform is, and
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: that restaurant brands can not make a decision between do
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I buy it or do I build? But say I'm
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: going to buy the OLO platform and build. I'm going
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: to build and do the differentiated stuff for my brand
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that makes me stand out and win the hearts and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: minds of the guests to me. But I'm going to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: use the engine that is OLO to power all the
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: undifferentiated heavy lifting and to bring about things like borderless
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and like to dispatch and like ol pay that are
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: really platform level innovation that no individual brand could do themselves.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: But at the scale of four thousand restaurants across six
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: hundred brands, Olo can do for the industry as kind
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: of a common good. So how do these feed into
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: your total growth algorithm moving forward. So we think about
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: new brands and new location growth as a four x
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: growth opportunity. We think about our ability to grow revenue
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: on a per location basis as the r PO opportunity,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and that's a twenty five x opportunity. So that's a
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: much bigger lever but together it's a hundred x opportunity
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: for OLO. Staying focused as we have been for nearly
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: eighteen years now on enterprise restaurants in the US, now
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: we've had a little bit of expansion beyond just enterprise restaurants.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: We've also in the last couple of quarters started working
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: with se stores that have fresh food programs that can
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: use the same platform to let a guess order a
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: sandwich or a pizza or that sort of thing customized
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: made to order and come and collect it or get
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: it delivered just in time. So that's a little bit
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of an expansion beyond the three hundred thousand enterprise restaurants
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: that we had considered our tam um. But we think,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: you know, between the two thousand fresh food program see stores,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: so three D fifty five thousand to do the math
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: on our eight four thousand into that three five that's
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: what gets you to the four x location growth opportunity. Cool. So,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you've been public for almost two years, has been difficult
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to maintain your culture while while also playcating Wall Street.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, what's nice about our
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: culture and the people that it attracts and the people
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: that it retains and grows over time. Everybody, to a
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: person within OLO has a lot of talent and can
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: work in many different industries, can work in a horizontal
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: technology company. They choose to work at OLO because fundamentally
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: they love restaurants. That is the common variable. We all
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: love the problem space that we work in. We love
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: that we can bring together solutions for restaurants that make
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it better for restaurant guests and better for restaurant operators
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and let the restaurant business be a better business because
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: we exist. And I find that that is really this
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: source of meaning and purpose. You hear a lot of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: companies like wondering about how are we going to become
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: purpose driven and retain people because they care about, you know,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: what we're doing, not just a paycheck. That's inherent in
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a company like oh Loo. Like we all love restaurants.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: We want to make restaurants better. We live through COVID
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: where we saw restaurants saying you know, you are our lifeline.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: If you don't exist, we don't exist. And you enabled
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: us to stay in business, to keep our customers fed,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: to keep our employees employed. That's stuck with us, That
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: like hardened that sense of meaning and purpose. And um, truly,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, this is the work that
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: I was put on this earth to you, and I
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: feel like incredibly lucky to be doing it at this
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: moment in time because there's only one time in history
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: when the restaurant industry, this massive trillion dollar industry, will
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: go through a digital transformation. That's right now, and this
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: is the platform where it's happening. So I'm incredibly grateful
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and at the same time, I'm incredibly unsatisfied because there's
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: so much more for us to do. And that's why
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna be doing this for the rest
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: of my career. Yeah. I love hearing how passionate you
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: are about the industry and how you're employees are passionate.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: And I think it's helped. It's got to be helped by, uh,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the great people in the hospitality industry. Man, I've covered
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: about half a dozen different sectors, and uh, they're just
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: different in the best way. You know. Um, it's amazing
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: how much collaboration, how sharing of ideas, UM, how open
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and just you know, down to earth people in the restaurant.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: And it is a really fun community. And it is
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a community that's based on attracting people that you know,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: want to make everybody feel like they're part of the community.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of the essence of hospitality. Our role
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in that is being the engine and sort of hard
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: coding into a software platform that can enhance that hospitality.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: All the things that we've learned along the way from
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: great folks like Danny Meyer, who has been a board
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: member at OLO since two thousand fourteen and who kind
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of wrote the the Bible as far as I'm concerned,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and setting the table that enlightened hospitality. So the big
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: challenge for me is how do I take some of
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: these principles and how do I put that into a
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: platform that can really lift all ships. Very cool? So,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: is there anything important to the story that we missed
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: or that you'd like to reiterate for potential investors? I
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: think the biggest thing that people miss is just how
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: big the restaurant industry is and how early it is
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: in this digital transformation journey. I mean, you have different extremes.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: You people who focus on delivery only and think, oh,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: it's so digital, it's so penetrated, but they miss that
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: digital delivery is just six percent of total industry sales.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: There's another ninety four percent out there, and although we're
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: going after the hundred percent, we believe that every transaction,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: every service model can be made better through the digital transformation.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: And we believe that that doesn't mean a cold heartless
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: experience for the guests. That in fact, a digital transformation,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a digital order experience and the data that throws off
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: can really raise the bar on hospitality and make it
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: an even more kind of human experience, which is surprising
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: to people when they hear me talk about it in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, for sure. I was. When I was
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: down at I c R. I had I had some
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: time to go to lunch, and I went to Bar
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Taco and it's a it's a digital experience, right, and uh,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it freed up so much time for the food runners
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: and the manager and the bartender to come over and
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: have a conversation and the experience was was phenomenal. So
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: digital can play a huge role in enhancing the experience,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: exactly right. That's a that's a great example, and um,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I think many many more restaurant brands are taking a
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: page out of the Bar Taco playbook and seeing ways
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: for digital to impact not just take out and delivery,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: but also on premise and also drive through. It's really
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: about every service model and providing that heightened guest experience
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and also the data that comes out of that experience,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: using that as a feedback loop to make it even
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: better next time around. Cole, I think that's a perfect
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: place to wrap it up. Where's the potential customers and
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: investors go to find more about Easy? It's Olo dot
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: com or on Twitter. It's just Olo. Is the is
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the handle all right? Nice? And easy? Well, thanks again
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: for doing this note, and I look forward to continuing
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: to follow the story uh and and following the the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: additional you know, breakthroughs that that UH you and your
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: team at Alo make and for the restaurant. Thank you
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: very much. It's great to be here.