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