The Digital Table: How Technology is Reshaping Hospitality

Restaurant Diva | Dine & Dish: Are you guys ready? Michele DiMeo: I'm ready when you are. You good? All right.

Well, welcome back, everybody, for another episode of Dine and Dish. And today's show is going to be amazing. We have, of course, another wonderful guest. I say this every week.

I bring on the best guest, but I'm super excited today to introduce Noah Glass. And I'm gonna give him the mic in two minutes so he can ex tell us who he is and what he does. And but Noah Glass | Olo: Red Rock. Michele DiMeo: Olo is just reshaping digital ordering for restaurants and I can't wait to jump right into the show.

So Noah, welcome, welcome. Noah Glass | Olo: Shell, thank you so much for having me. What an honor to join you. Michele DiMeo: Yeah.

Well, before we get started, can you spend just a couple minutes and talk about you and who you are and Olo and just your vision for your platform? And then we'll jump into all these questions. I have so much to go over with you. Noah Glass | Olo: Sure.

Okay, well, hi everybody. I am Noah Glass. I am the founder and CEO of Olo. ⁓ we are known as the digital ordering platform for today over 850 enterprise restaurant brands, 90,000 plus locations across those 850 brands.

And so we're the platform that's helping guests order and pay ahead, skip the line to get their food faster or get it delivered. That's really how people know us. And in addition to that digital ordering component of the business, we've added a lot of really great marketing capabilities so that you can. take the data that you get about the guest from their ordering behavior and then use that to further extend your relationship with the guest, personalize their experience and get them to come back to your restaurant even more often and try new things and order more and spend more and grow their guest lifetime value.

So that's the big focus at Olo. ⁓ We're a first-party ordering solution. That's how people know us. That means that we're helping brands to build their own app and website that let guests Michele DiMeo: Yeah.

Noah Glass | Olo: Order and pay ahead. We're also connecting brands to third-party marketplaces, so Doordash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, et cetera. And then most recently, we have introduced something new, which I hope we'll get a chance to talk about today, and that is called second party. ⁓ We, I think, created that term or popularized that term, but it sits in between first party and third party.

And the idea is that it takes the best of both worlds. And that is something that we call the OLO app. Where a guest can go to one place. This is launching later this year, see many brands in one place, ⁓ pay restaurant menu prices, not inflated prices.

And on the restaurant brand side, the brand gets to keep all of their profit. There's no commission on these orders, and they get to get that guest data as if it were a first-party transaction, really build their audience of guests who are loyal fans of the restaurant. Michele DiMeo: Wow. Well, you just touched on probably so many points that we're gonna talk about in detail on the show today.

But before we do that, ⁓ let's I think I met you is it been 18 years? Isn't that crazy? Noah Glass | Olo: Prop that sounds about right. I th I was gonna say two thousand eight is probably the first time I have an email from you, or an email from me to you, most likely.

Michele DiMeo: I know. And it's funny because when we were connecting on LinkedIn, I said, My God, I think I spoke to him eighteen years ago. I mean, time has gone I can't even believe it's been 18 years. Noah Glass | Olo: Yes.

Mm-hmm. Michele DiMeo: Well, before we get before we get started, I first off, congratulations on your success. I mean, what you've done over the last 18 years is just so admirable. I mean, you know this industry better than I do.

I mean, the restaurant business is just so volatile. And to be able to create a tech solution that's based that wasn't, I mean, we're gonna talk about there was nothing out there when you started. And I remember when you contacted me and we were like, Olo's so new. Do we go with Olo?

It wasn't integrated into Microsoft and I'm like, I hate micro ⁓ sh I'm I shouldn't say that, but I hate micros. It's not user friendly. And now we're gonna add another platform and now look at you. I mean, that's just incredible.

Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, so even before we met, ⁓ the company started in two thousand five. The idea really started, I can trace back my first executive summary that I wrote back to December eighteenth of two thousand three. So this has really been a long, long standing dream of mine. ⁓ but the company we're about to hit 21 years, June 1st of this year will be the 21 year ⁓ anniversary of the founding of Olo.

And yeah, it's been just a wild ride. I mean, I we started out as a mobile ordering solution. That was very ahead of its time. I was joking earlier today with a on another call that you know, we we built this mobile ordering thing at a time when only 5% of mobile phone users even had what could even be considered.

Michele DiMeo: Wow. Noah Glass | Olo: Considered a smartphone. And these were not very smartphones. They were Blackberries, Palm Trayos, maybe.

Michele DiMeo: Yes, flip phones, the old flip phones. Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: But everybody had the flip phone. And so what we had to do, we had to build backwards.

We had to build text message ordering. That's really how we came to market. And the thing that got us a little bit of attention, a little bit of media coverage, was that we built text message ordering so you could order and pay, triggering an order by a text message, and then it would bill your cart on file and send your order into the restaurant. And that was kind of the first time the text messages had been used in that way to make a real-world purchase.

They've been used for buying ringtones and wallpapers and that sort of thing, games, digital goods on phones, but they'd never been used to buy real world goods. And so that got us a little bit of media attention, press attention. ⁓ And then of course smartphones hit in a very big way, but that wasn't until much, much later in the story. So the first many years we're just kind of waiting for product market fit to happen.

And I think that's when we met Michelle and you were like, this sounds interesting, but I don't really know how this would apply to my Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Before we jump into the challenges, obviously, of a new business and rolling it out to restaurants and getting them to adopt and jump onto this platform, because I mean, look at today, and now we'll talk at the end of the show AI, and now the only way to go is tech.

So, I mean, you were just such a forward thinker. How did you think of these ideas? Like, what was your your ideas of the Olo story and where did it come from and the name? And just kind of give us a lead into who you are and how your brain came up with these amazing.

Was that a loaded question? Noah Glass | Olo: Okay. ⁓ it starts with No, no, it's great. I I was gonna say how long do we have?

'Cause I could I could do the very long winded version of this. I'll do the medium winded version of this. ⁓ I grew up and ⁓ my my mom was a a cookbook author Michele DiMeo: Ha ha ha. Okay, great.

Noah Glass | Olo: And that was an amazing part of my childhood eating a lot of ⁓ home cooked food that she was preparing at home. And restaurants were kind of this fascination of mine because I didn't get to go to restaurants very much growing up. We had all this great home cooked food. So ⁓ when I could start working, my first job was at a gas station.

I was a cashier. My second job when I got a license was to go and work for a pizza restaurant in my hometown, Newton, Massachusetts, called Pizza Man. And I got hired as a A delivery driver. And so I got to really understand the takeout and delivery business exceptionally well in this summer ⁓ in 1998 of delivering pizza in my hometown.

And I think that I never would have guessed that that was going to become something relevant to my career at that point. But when I look backwards, it it truly was. And so I saw some of the inefficiencies of the way that we were doing order taking, the way that we were taking. Payments, the way that we were doing the deliveries themselves.

⁓ and that definitely registered. ⁓ I went off to college, I went to to Yale. I played lacrosse at Yale, I sang in an a cappella group at Yale. I mentioned those things because I was really busy when I was there.

And one of the things that came out of being really busy was I I had to keep a calendar with me at all times to know when is my game, when is my practice, when is my rehearsal, when is this concert that we're doing. So I weirdly was walking around campus in 2020, 2002, 2003 with a ⁓ a Palm pilot. And that was a personal digital assistant, a very strange thing for a college kid to have. Yeah.

Michele DiMeo: I remember I had one. Yeah, I remember those. Noah Glass | Olo: But it kept me organized. And one of the things that I did was I looked at the different applications that you could download.

They weren't called apps then, they were called applications. And one application really captured my imagination. ⁓ it was called Vindigo. And the cool thing about Vindigo was that it would show you a map of what was around you.

I don't think it was location aware or GPS enabled. You would tell it where you were, and it would show you a map, and then it would show you nearby restaurants because they'd integrated. The Zagat reviews of restaurants. So you could see in my neighborhood, here's a great restaurant.

It's a French restaurant. Here's the rating on Zagat. Here are the reviews in Zagat. And I thought that was absolutely fascinating.

To me, that was it's something called ⁓ a POI, a point of interest. And immediately my mind rushed to, wouldn't it be cool if you couldn't just read the content and the reviews about the restaurant? But what if you could actually interact or transact with the restaurant? Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: On? What if you could do reservations? What if you could order and pay for takeout and delivery? And that was the beginning of the idea for what became Olo was when I first moved to New York City and I was using that application on my Palm Pilot.

And I was constantly waiting in line for coffee in the morning at coffee shops and waiting for lunch in the afternoon in long lines because everybody was going to get lunch at the same time. And I felt like it would be so much better if I could order ahead, pay ahead, and skip the line for coffee, order ahead, pay ahead, and skip the line at lunch. And from my days at Pizza Man, I knew that would be a good thing for the restaurant. They could increase their throughput capacity if they could take my order, prepare it ahead of time, and have it.

ready on time for me to come and pick up. So that was the beginning of the idea. I wrote it down as a business plan in December of that year, 2003, and it sort of sat in the back of my head And then I moved in 2004. I was working for a company called Endeavour at the time.

And I was launching their office in Johannesburg, South Africa, of all places. And there people were using smartphones. They were ahead of us in terms of smartphone adoption. And I got to meet some engineers who could build software applications for smartphones.

And we built a prototype of imagine building up a simple coffee order and then being able to submit. Submit it and have it go into a point of sale system or some sort of thing at the restaurant receiving orders. ⁓ and that was a great demonstration of this idea that I'd had, you know, a year earlier. I showed it to an investor.

⁓ I was at that point about to start at Harvard Business School. I'd gotten in and I was ⁓ heading there in the fall. And the investor said, if you believe in this idea enough that I've now been able to that I've now seen you demonstrate. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: To me. If you believe in it enough to quit your job and to withdraw your admission to Harvard Business School, burn the boats. You have no other path but this. And you're this is going to be the one path that you that you take and move forward with.

I will give you half a million dollars to get you started on this journey. And we negotiated a little bit on you know what was that half a million going to represent in terms of the total pie. We agreed on the terms, and I just knew this was the right time in my life, and it was the right time. in the kind of time of of of world technology, consumer technology to make this bet and pursue this as my only path forward.

And I wish I could tell you, I never regretted that decision. I never looked back and said, I wish I'd gone to Harvard Business School. I w I wish I'd stayed gainfully employed in this awesome dream job that I had. There were many times, many times, especially in those first couple of years when I did have those regrets.

But today in 2026, looking back, I am so grateful for the funding to go and do this, and also for that kind of commitment test of, do you believe in this enough? Really? Do you have enough conviction that you're gonna burn the boats? Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: And make it your only path forward. Only then will I back you and give you the funding because it's going to get hard and you're going to want an off-ramp. And if you don't have any off ramps, you're going to have to stay on the path to make this successful.

That was a huge, huge gift. And I'm super grateful to David Frankel, who now runs a fund called Founder Collective, where he works with incredible companies, including Uber and Suno revolutionizing music and Whoop revolutionizing quantified self and fitness. ⁓ It's all based on betting on entrepreneurs, betting on people who he believes are going to be able to stand the the awesome test that it is to be an early stage entrepreneur and make it through to the other side. And that's how we got started.

Michele DiMeo: Yeah, wow. So there was so much information you gave us. So let's talk early stages 'cause I mean the digital shift in hospitality has been I mean, from where you are to today it's I mean, we we talk every show about COVID and AI because it's changing the world, right? So up until COVID, I mean, so many people went out.

It was all about face-to-face dining. COVID changed the whole world how people dine. You know, now it turned into third-party delivery blowing up because things had to come to people's homes. There was no touch, you couldn't touch things.

And then it I mean, mobile ordering just went crazy. So talk about the whole off-premise dining explosion of mobile apps and third party. delivery and and how things have changed from where you started till today and just talk about how even mobile ordering and delivery just how it's just been so convenient and you know I think that's a great place to start and then we can get into it like you talked about second party and third party and and talk about what look what today is going to look like in the future.

Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, I think that 2013 was really a a watershed year for mobile apps and mobile ordering. And the reason I I point to that year, up until that point, the first eight years of Olo from 2005 to 2013, we stayed super lean. I mean, we were a 12-person company, no more, no less, 12-person company, all kind of young, scrappy, hungry, hugely determined people who were just in it together with a mission and Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: you know, bucking one another up with just the littlest bits of success here and there to stay on this journey together.

And we had this motto of that era that was embrace the suck. It was, this is so hard. This is so painful. We're facing rejection every day.

And everyone that we're competing with is also facing the same thing. And if we can just be a little bit more resilient, a little tougher and embrace this, we'll get to the other side and we'll be successful where others will fall off. 2013 changed that. In 2013, you had Papa John's, Pizza Hut, and Domino's, all three of the big pizza guys that had gotten to over half of their sales coming through digital channels.

So they became digital, you know, digital first businesses. And they had started before Olo existed in the late 90s when I was delivering pizza. That's kind of when they started their journey with online ordering for home delivery. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: The other big thing that happened in 2013 was that Starbucks came out with the Starbucks mobile ordering app. You know, they'd had the Starbucks card, they had the Starbucks app, but mobile ordering that hit in 2013. When that hit, every brand out there, whether you were in coffee and pizza or anything in between, was saying: this thing, this smartphone that we saw Steve Jobs announce in 2008 that we've used in our everyday life with apps like Uber that are a remote control for getting a car to come.

Pick you up and take you from point A to point B. This revolutionary experience, this on-demand experience. This is going to change our industry too. And we don't have the resources that Starbucks does to go and build this in-house.

So we need a partner, a software platform that can do this for us, software as a service. OLA was one of several players that was around at that time, but we were really, really well positioned and credible with the partners that we were working with. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: We were able to raise the funding round and really step on the gas and become a much larger version of ourselves to supply all the demand that was now out there.

All these brands coming to us and saying, We want what Starbucks has. We don't have the team to do it. We need you to do it for us and to pay you as a service provider to us, all the same things. Our branding on top, integrated into our point of sale system, micros or otherwise, giving us our guest data, billing to our credit card platform.

etc. That's what we were ready to build at that point. We went from a 12-person team up to eight years later at the time of our IPO in March of 2021, a 600-person team. We scaled 50x during that next eight years.

And those were the go-go times when it was the Starbucks type of experience of order ahead, pay ahead, skip the line, get your food faster for takeout. And then we layered on top of that delivery. So ⁓ a guest being able to order from a brand and the brand being able to offer delivery through its own first-party channel by building out a network of delivery service provider partners, a product that we call dispatch. So we would match an order with a delivery courier to come collect the order just on time.

delivered to the guest but it would feel like an on-brand experience because you're ordering from the brand's same web or app experience that we launched in 2016. In 2017 we launched a product called Rails and Rails is the third party component of what we do. At the time everybody had tablets, a tablet for every different marketplace that you were working with. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: Olo came in and said, What if we were able to do away with the tablets? You can still take orders from the third-party marketplaces, but control your menu in one place and push it out to those marketplace menus. And then when orders originate from there, have that order come through Olo and into the point of sale. So you're getting one place where all the orders are deposited into.

That was a game changer for us. Michele DiMeo: Yeah, so smart. One dashboard, one integration. Yeah, for sure.

Noah Glass | Olo: So so we had really those three products and it was just every year, you know, up up and to the right. ⁓ and then we were at the end of twenty nineteen starting to think about, you know, how important we'd become to our restaurant customers and the fact that we needed to do something to show them that we're gonna be around for the long term and that this mission critical component of their business they could trust in the hands of a third party like Olo. So we decided the way to really do that, to manifest that is to go.

Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: Go public. The end of 2019, we started work on an S1, which is the document you file with the SEC to go public. We were on file in February, March of 2020.

That's when COVID hit. We didn't know what this was going to do to our business. We didn't know what it was going to do to the industry. We went pencils down on the process of going public, and we just took stock of our team, made sure that everybody was okay and safe, our customers making sure that they had a way of ensuring business continuity, staying in business, even if they didn't.

Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: have a drive-thru. And we had all these models, Michelle. We built out a model where effectively revenue went to zero because restaurants were just, you know, health department said you can't be open at all.

People can't congregate even in the kitchen. And we had a model that showed, or maybe the thing that we do to your point, digital ordering for takeout and delivery, maybe that's going to become a much bigger part of this industry. And I remember we were at 8% of overall sales as an industry were digital before COVID. Michele DiMeo: Exactly.

Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: During COVID, that shot up to 16%. So it doubled. Our revenue as a company also doubled because it was very much tracking that exact mix of orders.

So we would have been pretty small if we had gone public as intended in June of 2020. We instead went public in March of 2021. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: We were just under $100 million of revenue, ⁓ annualized recurring revenue.

We were at about $122 million at the time of the IPO. And again, that had doubled from the year before. So we were very fast growing, profitable, and had a very successful IPO in March of 2021. and that was a huge moment of celebration for us, right?

It was 16 years after the founding of the company, and here we were on the New York Stock Exchange, which was the The same block where I'd first had the idea when I first moved to New York City, ⁓ celebrating the company going public. And that was a four and a half year slug of time of being a public company. Before last September, we were acquired by Toma Bravo, who is ⁓ the world's leading software-focused private equity firm. ⁓ they took us private in September.

We sold the company for $2 billion to Tom Toma Bravo. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Wasn't it? Noah Glass | Olo: And after for me, you know, it was 20 years of having run the business, you would think that I would sort of be thrilled with that outcome and take my chips and go off to the beach.

My family and I then reinvested 75% of our proceeds back into the company because we were so confident in the team at Toma Bravo and so confident in the opportunity ahead. We felt super aligned with that team that they were going to help us to execute on. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: our our game plan and live into this opportunity and really reshape the industry by doing so.

And a lot of the things that we've done since, acquiring a loyalty company, announcing the Olo app were exactly what we had in mind and what they heard us planning to do as we were talking to them leading up to their acquisition of Olo in September of last year. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Wow. What a story, huh?

Well, I mean, I can't even imagine, you know, you take this idea, you know, right out of school and it's you see it come to fruition. And to be so successful successful, you have to be like an aha moment. You know, it's almost like pinched me. I can't believe, you know, everybody bought into my idea 20 years later, right?

It's just amazing. Noah Glass | Olo: I have this phrase that the T Molo has heard me use a ton ⁓ whenever people say something like what you just said, which is I'm grateful and unsatisfied. I'm hugely grateful for everything that's happened over the past 21 years and and beyond. I mean, I'm hugely grateful for everything up until this point.

And at that exact same time, I'm unsatisfied because I see there's such a huge opportunity ahead. So if you think about, I think the last public number that we disclosed, we did about $30 billion of. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: Food sales through the Olo platform. And I think we announced that was the 2024 number. But let's just hold on to that for a moment.

⁓ That's really big, right? Like that compared to any other restaurant out there, the only thing bigger than that is McDonald's. They do $54 billion. I think Starbucks is $28 billion.

So if we were a restaurant, we're not. But if we were, we would be the second largest out there behind only McDonald's. Even still, thirty billion is against a backdrop in this country of $1.5 trillion of food sales.

So from that perspective, you're like, we're at two percent. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Such a small percent. Yeah.

Noah Glass | Olo: We've got, you know, we're we're still we I say, you know, we're at base camp and we still have an incredible climb ahead. We are not at the at the summit, ⁓ but we have an incredible, it's gonna not gonna be easy, it's gonna be epic. We've got a great climb ahead, and we see a future where we can be a much, much larger share of that 1.5 trillion and growing restaurant sales ⁓ industry.

Michele DiMeo: Yeah. So talk about the restaurants for me a little bit. I mean, you've had so much In the beginning, I mean, obviously the struggle to get people on board, but today, what do you see restaurants still not fully understanding about the whole digital footprint and and mobile ordering? Because I'm sure you're still hearing it.

⁓ you know, we should be third party. We, you know, what about digital ordering? So talk to me about what you think restaurateurs still don't understand. You know, tie it back to my level, you know, my business, and ⁓ let's jump right into, you know, what's coming and what's that evolution look like from here.

Noah Glass | Olo: The biggest thing is that the transaction is not the goal. The transaction is a really important part. ⁓ but the transaction also yields this incredible co-product. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: You know, I I learned this ⁓ I think in in high school that a a byproduct is like a waste product. A coproduct is a valuable additional product created by the first thing. And that valuable co-product is guest data. That every transaction holds in it clues about who this guest is and what they like and what they dislike.

The level of detail of an order where somebody is able to go through with all the modifications and substitutions and other customers. Organizations they can do to articulate exactly the way that they want their bowl or they want their sandwich or they want their salad, whatever it is. There's so much rich data in there that enables you to learn about that guest, compare them to other guests, and then through that personalize their experience the next time around. And that to me is the biggest issue with third party and relying too much on third party.

It's not the commissions. I think that's problematic because it effectively rips all the profits out of our industry. But it's the fact that no third party is sharing guest data back with the restaurant. The restaurant is renting those transactions, they're renting those guests.

It is not a true guest of the restaurant where I can understand, ⁓ that's Michelle. She's one of my regulars and she's trying something new this time. I wonder if she'll order this again next time or if she'll revert back to the thing she got last time because this didn't appeal to her. Are easy to capture if you're a proprietor of a small restaurant.

You think about like cheers and knowing someone's name and drink and bar stool. Really, really hard to do. In fact, there's a principle called Dunbar's rule. You can really only hold about 150 human relationships and those kind of associations of 150 people's name, drink, and bar stool in your mind as an individual in the human brain.

And that is why the augmentation. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: Of that with a ⁓ technology platform underneath that can capture that data about many, many more guests and draw comparisons to other guests is super, super powerful. And we at Olo, our mission is hospitality at scale.

That is our registered trademark. And that's the very essence of it. That what if we can take the thing that is so magical about having a really intimate personal relationship with a proprietor of a restaurant, and we can scale it so that you can do that kind of you can you can make somebody feel like a regular and special and seen and understood and cared for, very essence of our industry, at the scale of an enterprise restaurant across thousands of locations with a team that's rotating in and out and maybe new to the job but can inherit the knowledge that the brand has of you as the guest.

That's really what we seek to do in our marketing stack of all the things that we're now doing with a guest data platform and guest relationship management and marketing automation and loyalty and surveys. All of that is really to use that seed crystal of all of the orders that we've done, billions of orders over the years, as a way of helping brands to better connect with their guests and cultivate really a tribe of regulars. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So you said something so important. ⁓ What's made us successful throughout the years, obviously squizito, we'll talk squizzito, pizza and pasta. It is the neighborhood gathering place. I mean, they come in and our frontline is like, ⁓ hey, how are you?

You want the regular? We know you're here three days a week. I mean, that's so important for a local community restaurant, you know? And then COVID hits and you lose that connectivity.

And now you're all mobile and you're all third party and third party just takes off. And you know, you saying about that. Regular and building that order is so true. I mean, even today, you know, I went to place an order, I'll just use DoorDash, for example.

And I have my history there because, of course, ease. You know, you're busy, you're running, and it's like, ⁓ I'm gonna have the same thing again. You know, it's already in your order history. So it's keeping that connectivity to the guest and keeping it personalized as if it's like, ⁓ hey Michelle, how you been?

You know, so nice to see you. You already know my order, but I'm doing it myself. You know, so it's giving you the ability. ability to have the repeat customers the ease of ordering, the familiarity of what they like to order at their fingertips, right?

I mean, it's brilliant. Noah Glass | Olo: The other thing that I love is that comparison of that guest to other guests. And this is where the things that we're doing are very much inspired by looking around at other verticals, other consumer experiences. I take a lot of inspiration from Netflix and Spotify in this case, where Netflix recommends shows and videos to me.

Spotify recommends songs to me. It's in part based on what I've listened to in case of Spotify, what I've watched in the case of Netflix. Michele DiMeo: Right. Behavior.

Of course. It w behavior. Noah Glass | Olo: But it's also tied to the other guests that they're able to see. And they see the affinity of a person who likes this song.

Also seems to really like this song, but Noah's never heard this song. Let's put this song into his Discover Weekly because there's a very high likelihood that he's going to like that. Same thing with Netflix. That's called collaborative filtering, and it's a form of machine learning.

We're now doing that for restaurants. And I believe that's the first time that that's really been done in this industry. But understanding it's great that I have your regular orders and you can one click reorder them. Awesome.

That takes a lot of friction out. It makes you feel known and special. It's Also great if I can say to the restaurant, you know what Michelle might also like given what she always gets and what other people who always get what she gets also get that she's never tried? This thing.

Maybe that means recommending it to you as a personalized recommendation. Maybe that means telling the restaurant to drop a little sample of it into your bag so that you try it and you're like, that was really generous of them, and that was awesome. And next time I'm gonna come back and get that thing, maybe I now develop another craving for your restaurant. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: And I don't come once every week. I come twice every week because I get one craving one time, the other craving another time. That's the kind of thing that we're helping to systematize ⁓ in the Ola platform. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So another interesting topic, driving revenue through digital. So you're talking about samples, you're talking about suggestive basically like the old time suggestive selling, like back in the day where, you know, whether it's retail or clothing or food, you're suggestive selling. Well, hey, this shirt looks great with this pants or this sauce goes great with this steak.

So it's, you know, it's it's taking that piece now and learning behavior. Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah. Michele DiMeo: and driving revenue, which is so cool for anybody listening, whether you're in hospitality or in any other type of field, you know, digital ordering can actually increase revenue. Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, it's really powerful if you think about being able to fully understand a guest's what we call guest lifetime value or GLV.

⁓ that is a concept very well known in the e-commerce space. E-commerce marketers know what an average guest lifetime value looks like, and that defines what they're willing to pay to go and get a new guest in their advertising and marketing to new guests. That's called customer acquisition cost in their world. We call it guest acquisition cost.

Really understanding based on your behavior, how much are you going to be worth to the restaurant over your lifetime as a guest is now something that you can really nail down. And it's super valuable to think about how do I get more of my guests to look like the upper echelon of my best guests? What are the things that my best guests try and love and make them come back again and again? What are the suggestive ⁓ selling things that I can do to increase the average order?

order size. and then really how do I drive frequency? I think frequency is the biggest thing. It is, you know, it's one thing to say we need more traffic and to go dump advertising dollars into third-party marketplaces just to drive traffic, but profitless traffic into the restaurant.

It's another thing to really dial in on your best guests and think about what is a reason to get them to come back one more time a quarter. If I could get them to crave one thing, or could get them to come for some special event, or I could in some way Find a way to influence them to pick me versus an alternative one more time a quarter. You know, it's typically true that the top 20% of your guests represent about 60% of your overall revenue. So understanding who those people are and how you can find more people that look like them, that's critically important.

And it's been a big blind spot in this industry since the very beginning, you know, in the enterprise side of the industry. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. You know, you also mentioned owning your data, which is Is so important. I mean, that's the first thing I always ask.

Well, you know, with any partner we bring in, whether it's third-party, ⁓ mobile ordering. I mean, we've worked with different companies through the years and now we have Toast as our POS provider. But the first thing I always say is you have to be able to own that data because as a restaurateur, you want to be able to market to that data, whether it's through push marketing through their cell phones or text marketing or email marketing. So, you know, and you talked about third-party delivery.

⁓ and you technically find All into a third party app, correct? You know, as a mobile ordering. So you're not technically third party delivery, but you are a third party app. Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, we're a third party platform, but from the perspective of the guest is ordering directly from the brand and the brand's data rights, it's first party.

The the brand gets the guest data every single time when the order is coming through the OLA platform. And I would I would draw the distinction between third-party marketplaces that are consumer-facing. In that case, I can't think of a single one that actually shares the data with the brand. And I think that's really problematic fundamentally because you never know for sure, is this a net new guest or is this one of my guests who otherwise would have paid full menu price, but now they're ordering through a market.

Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: place, I don't know who they are, and I'm paying this huge commission, and most of the profit, if not all of the profit, and I don't know who the guest is, and they're not becoming a new guest in my database is going to have a guest lifetime value. It's just a rented transaction. Michele DiMeo: Yeah, for sure.

I mean, especially with third party, because I mean they're they hold all that information. I mean, they don't they don't share it. I mean, it goes through their platform. We get a like you said, a a a tablet on the wall, the order comes through or it's integrated into the POS.

I mean, we we're not keeping that information, they're keeping it. So we rely on the guests going back to their site to place that order or through our site to their site to place that order. So a hundred percent. So Noah Glass | Olo: And then now you have to advertise on those platforms or yeah, your your guest went in there, but if you're not paying the advertising, you're not on the front page, you're buried on page four, and your guest is seeing another brand that is advertising.

Michele DiMeo: To drive correct. Noah Glass | Olo: And paying a commission, and they're rerouting that guest to a competitor of yours. That I think that's really, really problematic for our industry. And it it effectively turns restaurants into wholesalers because they don't have that direct relationship with the guest.

And that is fundamental to our industry is restaurateur and the and the restaurant team inside the restaurant having that direct relationship with the guest, having that data so they can heighten that relationship, personalize the experience the guest is having. Michele DiMeo: Yeah. So you talked about somewhat AI. ⁓ let's kind of jump into that because now AI is, I mean, it's taking over the world.

I mean, everybody's using it in any in some way, shape, or form when it comes to knowledge, systems, culture. I mean, it's basically everybody's assistant. So, I mean, obviously AI and hospitality, how is it working with your app, your systems, and how's it assisting or hurting the relationship with the restaurant? Because now it's kind of in the middle, right?

It it knows how to behave. So how are you integrating that and how are you dealing with those changes with your customers? Noah Glass | Olo: So the the reason that we announced the Olo app March third of this year and launching later this year was not purely because of creating an app where ⁓ a guest could find all their favorite restaurants in one place. It was to define a set of principles.

And the set of principles are restaurants should be able to have guests follow them in one click. It shouldn't be this arduous process of I've got to download an app, I've got to create a new account. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: I've got to create a password, I've got to add my credit card.

One click should enable a restaurant guest to follow the brand, and with that, give the brand the ability to have all of the data about that guest that the guest wants to share with them. Number two is that when the guest orders, The brand should get full profit on the order. We shouldn't be taking a commission out of the order. The brand should be getting all of the profit that they get from a direct order through this channel.

⁓ And the third is that the brand can benefit from what we already know about that guest, what the guest has shared with Olo. So they don't have to make the guest repeat themselves with having to put in a credit card again or having to put their delivery address in again. That should just carry over with the guest, as should their account. Michele DiMeo: Right, of course.

Noah Glass | Olo: Those are kind of the principles of the Olo app, but those principles are also the larger set of principles for what we call OLO network. The ambition of Olo Network is that the app is the first product surface for a guest to order from. The next phase of it is agenc commerce. And that's where AI comes in.

That's where you can imagine guests initiating an order from Chat GPT, from Gemini, from Claude, from Grok, et cetera, et cetera. And those orders, knowing who that guest is, having all that relevant data, like their payment ⁓ card. Their delivery address, their likes and dislikes, allergens, perhaps, dietary preferences, perhaps. And then using that to find the best restaurant that can serve them.

And when the order goes through, making sure that all those things remain true, all those principles remain true, the restaurant is getting full profit on that order, and the restaurant is getting the guest data so they know who that guest is in the same way as if the guests came through the restaurant's own app or own website. That's what we're doing with our. Michele DiMeo: Isn't Noah Glass | Olo: play with the Olo app and this idea of second network, sorry, second party in the Olo network is to set the table for a world in which AI becomes the front door for a guest placing an order.

What I fear is that if we don't do this, this is my like nightmare scenario, those orders get routed through third-party marketplaces where their principles apply. 15 to 30% commissions charged to the restaurant, ripping all the profit out of the transaction. No guest data shared. That's not a world that's going to work for restaurants.

We want to make it so that restaurants move into this world of AI and agentic commerce in a way that is restaurant friendly and guest centric at the same time. And that's what now with 85 million guests who use Olo every year and 90,000 restaurants on the Olo platform, we're able to bring together as a two-sided network that's really at scale. We're doing this for Olo restaurants first, but then we're going to open it up and we've said this publicly to any restaurant that wants to be on this platform.

And as these new demand channels, these new New AI agentic commerce demand channels open up, you get to keep your profits. You get to keep that guest data. Michele DiMeo: Mm. Noah Glass | Olo: I think that is a a fundamental way that restaurants should demand that they move into this AI agentic commerce world.

⁓ and otherwise, I I I fear for our industry in a way, I'm sorry to say, was far far bigger of a fear than the COVID days. I just really feel like if we don't find a a a tolerable way for these new demand channels to not negatively impact restaurants' direct connectivity with their guests. Michele DiMeo: ⁓ yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: And their profitability, the restaurant business that we know is going to cease to exist.

I really think it's that existential. And that's kind of the rallying cry within Olo that gets us so passionate and fired up for this is we believe that this mission that we're on is critical to supporting this industry that we love and the hospitality that it provides to the world. And so you think about it in that way, it's it's no surprise that we're Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: We're so passionate about doing this and feel like we need to make a stand right now and really galvanize as many restaurants and people who care about hospitality together to fight for it.

Michele DiMeo: Yeah. That's so true. I mean, the margins are just getting smaller and smaller and smaller in the restaurant world, you know, and it gets the point. We talked about this on my last show.

You know, food goes up, everything goes up, third party goes up, everybody's going up and up and up, and you can only charge so much for a hamburger. I mean, especially when you're looking at full service and fast casual. I mean, full service, you have a little bit more wiggle room because you have head chefs, you have a little bit ⁓ more higher quality products. But when you go into Fast Casual and a burger's a burger, a chicken.

Tender is a chicken tender. You can only pay so much for a chicken tender or a burger, you know. And if third party's taking 30%, food costs is at 28%, labor is at 30%. At some point, I mean the restaurant doesn't make a dime and and it goes away.

You know, then there's no restaurants anymore. You know, it's it's getting tougher. It really is. So what do you think operators should start doing now to prepare, you know, for all these changes coming down the line?

There's gotta be some tips that you have that, you know. Noah Glass | Olo: Nothing left. There's nothing left. Yeah.

Michele DiMeo: start looking at this, start working on on these topics, you know. Noah Glass | Olo: I think that restaurants need to I so many restaurants, you know, we were talking about COVID before. So many restaurants during COVID, it was like any port in a storm. They just knew they needed digital ordering of some variety and they just got to the marketplaces and got going with the marketplaces.

And that maybe kept them in business when the alternative was we're just out of business, but in a way in which you know they're paying fifteen to thirty percent on every order that's coming through and not building direct rel direct digital relationships with their guests. So First off, if you don't have, it doesn't have to be Olo. If you don't have a first party digital ordering platform through your POS provider or through a company like Olo or an SMB digital ordering provider, that is fundamental.

You need to get started on that. You need to have your own app, your own website, your own mobile website. Enable your best guests, if they want to order your food, to order it online through you for takeout at least, I would argue for delivery as well, because a lot of guests that want. Delivery, but that's fundamental.

And then make sure to your point, Michelle, that you're getting the data ⁓ about those orders tied back to the guests so that you can start to do some intelligent marketing out to those guests who say that they want to hear from you. And it won't be every guest. Some guests will say, I love ordering from you, but I don't really want to get your email. That's fine.

Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Right. Unsubscribe. ⁓ don't text me.

Yeah. Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, but but a lot of your guests will say, I want to hear about things. I want to hear if you're opening a new location. I want to hear if you're offering a new product.

I want to hear if you're doing s something special for Valentine's Day, because that would be a really fun thing to to come to your restaurant. So make sure that you're cultivating that list of direct relationships and direct relationships where the guests are saying, I want to hear from you, so that you can start to tell them about things that are relevant. It might be that you want to tell them about things like deals and offers to get them to come back. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm.

Noah Glass | Olo: More frequently, but hold that aside for a second, at least be able to communicate with them. That's really how you build your following as a restaurant, and I think that's a really important thing. And as technology progresses, it's always something to fall back on. You know, you have this audience of guests, they're your tribe of loyal followers, and the goal should be to grow that tribe as big as possible.

And with that scaling, you can scale your organization behind it. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So before we run out of time, this happens every show, we get to like forty-five minutes and I'm like, no, we have so much more to cover.

You're such a great guest and so much insightful, amazing information. But I always do this lightning round at the end to see what your thoughts are, quick answers just for them listening to see what our expert says. So one tech every restaurant must have to make it today. Noah Glass | Olo: First party digital ordering.

Michele DiMeo: Gotcha. Most overrated trend in hospitality tech. Noah Glass | Olo: Mmm, I'm gonna say social media like TikTok and focusing on I'm not I I get people who are, I just think that it's so overdone. People think I mean it's sort of like vanity metrics.

People are just, ⁓ we were on TikTok, we're on Instagram. Actually, I'm gonna switch this. I think that the most overrated thing is just focusing on Michele DiMeo: You're not a TikToker, huh? Noah Glass | Olo: Some vanity metric like how many app downloads you got, or you know, could you do a deal that got you to the top of the app store?

I've seen a bunch of brands saying, like, we are the top of the app store, but we gave away like a lot of free stuff in order to do that. That only matters if you're at the end of the day forging direct relationships with guests who are coming back and going to order from you again and again and building your business as a one-time thing for bragging rights, not very valuable. Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dine in or delivery. If you're home with your family, are you dining in or delivery? Noah Glass | Olo: And could be very expensive. I am home with my family these days.

I am often cooking, ⁓ although sometimes I get tired of cooking and we'll do delivery. We have a puppy and the puppy means that we do a lot of dining at home. Michele DiMeo: So you're going back you're going back to your roots, huh? You're going back to your roots when your mom used to cook at home, huh?

Nostalgic. Noah Glass | Olo: It's very true. It's very true. She showed me a picture last weekend of us cooking together when I was my son's age and it it melted my heart.

Michele DiMeo: So cool. And one word that you think hospitality's gonna be in twenty thirty. Noah Glass | Olo: Personalized. Michele DiMeo: Yeah, I agree.

I it's a good one. That's a good one. So for everybody listening, you know DMs are always open on Instagram, even though we're gonna talk about social media a little bit. ⁓ you know where to reach me.

You can go to restaurantdiva.com. We're on LinkedIn. ⁓ again, another amazing show.

Noah, you're such an inspiration. Your story's amazing. We love everything you're doing for the restaurant world. And before we go, Where can they get information about Olo for anybody listening that wants more information about your company and what you're doing?

What's the best place to find you or somebody that works for you? Noah Glass | Olo: Yeah, the best place is Olo.com. That is our website.

⁓ we're very active on LinkedIn. I am very active on LinkedIn. I think I'm ⁓ Noah, I think I'm NH Glass, ⁓ but you can find me Noah Glass at Olo on LinkedIn. and that's the best place to get us.

⁓ the answer is not TikTok, as you might imagine. Michele DiMeo: Yes, definitely not TikTok. And before we go, what do you want to leave us with? I mean, is there one mindset or something restaurant operators should know to stay competitive, to be from good to great?

What do you want to leave us with today? Noah Glass | Olo: What I wanna leave this audience with is I it is so easy to get down on the world these days. There's so much bad news out there and things to make you feel bummed out and like you're doom scrolling late at night. And I love, love, love this industry because it's the antithesis of of that.

This industry billions of times every year is making people's day. It's making them smile. It's making them feel a little bit of, you know, that love and somebody's taking care of me. And somebody is kind to me, and that's called hospitality.

We get to work in this beautiful industry that's spreading kindness and love in the world as its business model. Like the more we do, the better we do. And I want there to be much, much more of that in the world. I love that as a company, we get to be the wind beneath the wings of the purveyors of hospitality.

And I want all of them to be wildly profitable so they can grow and Michele DiMeo: Mm-hmm. Noah Glass | Olo: Be even more successful and put more hospitality out into the world. I believe in a dark world, hospitality is the light. And I also believe that hospitality is worth fighting for.

And that's what we do every day at Olo because I think the alternative is a lot of challenges for the people who are the purveyors of hospitality. And they're our heroes. We want to help them overcome the challenges and be wildly successful. And that's what brings us to work every day and makes us work long long enough.

Michele DiMeo: Yeah. Well, you know what? Coming from you, that's just such powerful words because I couldn't agree more. Being in this industry and working in the restaurant business, I mean, we do it all day long, long hours, late nights.

And I agree, you know, getting in front of people and watching them share memories with us and engagements and marriage proposals. I mean, I can't tell you how many amazing experiences I've had happen in our restaurant. And and I agree. That's what keeps us here and keeps us opening more restaurants and keeps us going to work every day.

So ⁓ just like you, I'm very passionate about it. So to hear that come from, you know, a digital side, a tech side, you know, where you're not touching the guests per se. I mean th through an app, but not like we are face to face, that means so much to a restaurateur. So, you know, as everybody heard right from Noah, I'm gonna say it, you know, technology is so important.

To your success. I mean, you have to embrace it. If you're not going to embrace it, it's going to pass you. So you have to embrace technology, but it's never going to replace hospitality.

I mean, hospitality is there. We love going to restaurants. We love dining together. And food is love, right?

Yeah. So, Noah, thank you so much. It was amazing catching up. Let's not do it.

18 years. Well, in 18 years, you might be the president. Who knows? Noah Glass | Olo: There you go.

Fruit is love. I'm marking my calendar. We're gonna do this in ⁓ what is eighteen years from now. Gosh, that's ⁓ what, twenty forty four?

What what let's ⁓ let's set a calendar invite for twenty forty four. Michele DiMeo: Let's do it a little sooner. Yeah, let's do it a little sooner. And thank you again for being a guest.

And congratulations. Keep doing what you're doing. And I'll keep doing what I'm doing. And I hope to talk to you soon.

And for everybody listening, that's another amazing episode of Dine and Dish. And we'll be back next week. Thanks again, Noah. I'll talk to you soon.

Okay. Bye. Noah Glass | Olo: Thank you, Michelle. Thank you.

Thanks, Michelle. See ya.