Olo doesn’t have any delivery drivers of its own. Its CEO still sees an opportunity to take on Uber and DoorDash.
The restaurant software company has spent most of the last two decades running ordering and payment systems for restaurants. In some ways, it’s akin to Shopify, the company that provides various backend services to online sellers, CEO and founder Noah Glass told Business Insider.
Now, though, Olo is trying to attract consumers to its own platform.
Last month, the company unveiled an app for ordering food delivery. Although Olo uses its own ordering interface, it draws workers from 27 delivery services, including DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber, to deliver from about 800 restaurant brands.
When a delivery order comes in, Olo checks which drivers are available and how much it costs to deliver the order on each service, Glass told Business Insider. The idea is that Olo can save restaurants — and customers — time and money by picking the best of multiple options.
“We’re finding the best option at that moment,” he said.
The app also charges customers the same menu prices as customers who order in-store. That can save customers between 15% and 30%, since many third-party delivery services mark up menu prices, according to Olo.
Olo is stepping into a competitive area of delivery.
DoorDash, already a powerhouse in the restaurant world, has agreed to acquire grocery-focused Instacart in a deal that would give it even more sway in food delivery. And Walmart is now having its own delivery workers bring customers restaurant meals alongside their weekly grocery haul.
Rising food costs are squeezing customers. Some diners are cutting back or sticking to meal deals at restaurants like McDonald’s.
That makes the promise of cutting out menu markups for restaurant delivery more appealing, Glass said.
Many customers “just look at the menu price and say, ‘Wow, restaurants have gotten way more expensive all of a sudden,'” Glass said.
Olo already has millions of customers
There’s a good chance that you’ve used Olo to order food before and didn’t know it.
The company handles ordering for hundreds of restaurants through their own apps and websites, from Panda Express to Five Guys. About 40 million customers have created Olo accounts by ordering through those restaurants, Glass said.
Olo’s new app creates a single place where customers can choose food from multiple restaurants, he said.
“They’ve gone to Waffle House, and they’ve ordered and created an account,” he said. “They can now go to any of the other brands that use Olo accounts as a login mechanism.”
Olo’s app offers both delivery and pickup orders. Most of the roughly 3.5 million orders that Olo processes daily are takeout orders, Glass said. The company was publicly traded until it was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2025.
Olo is also developing a protocol to accept orders from AI agents, Glass said. He added that Olo’s price advantage could stand out to agents as they decide which app to place the order on.
While order volumes through AI agents are low now, Glass said that they could become “another COVID-like or maybe even larger wave” of orders.
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