Olo

📹 Leading restaurants like bartaco, California Fish Grill, and First Watch Restaurants trust Olo to deliver visibility and deep insights into guest preferences and behavior. Download our ebook on guest lifetime value to learn how your brand can attract and retain more loyal guests. https://bit.ly/49TcDEb

Every Sunday in the summer, I get to be a super dad. My superpower? Ice cream.  More specifically, skipping the line when getting ice cream. It’s become a ritual for our family to grab a treat from Dairy Queen after soccer practice on Sunday afternoons. The Dairy Queen app, designed by our partners at WillowTree, is beautiful and thanks to Olo’s integration with Radar, our order gets started at the perfect time as we drive towards the store. Even when the store is packed on a hot Sunday afternoon, we get to skip the line and I look like a total hero to my kids. The Blizzards always taste sweeter knowing that our partnerships with Kevin Baartman, Troy Bader, Nick Patrick, and everyone at DQ, Radar and WillowTree power these kinds of moments for families across the country. Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend ahead with lots of ice cream, and no lines!

We are thrilled to welcome Millburn Deli to Olo! 🥪 Order online: https://lnkd.in/eTnhW2D3 🤝 Launched in partnership with Thanx

❌ Myth: Digitizing the guest experience makes it less personal. ✔️ Fact: Digital touchpoints enable you to collect, analyze, and act on transactional and behavioral data in ways that allow for more personalized guest engagements. Watch our exclusive interview with California Fish Grill CMO Mark Hardison to discover how the brand makes every guest feel like a regular: https://lnkd.in/edAcivT8

Living in SoCal, I can assure you not all traffic is good traffic. Here’s why that’s true for #restaurants, too. As #inflation and a litany of other factors outside operators’ control have caused traffic to dip, many brands have pivoted to discounts and promotions. Those tactics may lead to short-term wins, but they also come with some long-term risks: 📉 Profit erosion: Lowering prices to win visits ultimately eats into your bottom line. Everyone loves a good deal, but if you’re not careful, you can discount and BOGO profits into oblivion. 🚰 Watered-down value propositions: If you’re not a value-based brand, suddenly competing on price muddies the waters for what your brand is all about. When guests associate you with a one-time deal, it becomes a lot harder to win their next visit if their baseline value expectations have shifted. ↔️ Overemphasis on transactions vs.guest relationships: When you home on on traffic and transactions as KPIs, you risk losing sight of what actually drives loyalty. Digitally mature restaurants have applied the lessons learned from retail over the 10+ years and made guest lifetime value their North Star metric—because when you make a guest feel like a regular, they’ll be a lot more likely to become one. Increasing orders is mission-critical for any restaurant—but how you do it matters, too. When you’re equipped with the right tools and data, you’ll find yourself having a lot more levers to pull. 

Tomorrow is #NationalWaffleDay I remember long drives from Miami to Orlando as a kid - spotting those tall signs would give us hope that it was time for a break and some waffles, no matter what time of day it was! Sitting at a similar booth years later with Noah Glass is a surreal experience. Working at Olo and supporting beloved brands like Waffle House through their digital transformations is like the first bite of a pecan waffle. Thank you Patrick Marshburn and the entire Waffle House Team for the great partnership.  Hope you all enjoy #NationalWaffleDay tomorrow, great reason to order a waffle and give Borderless a spin while you're at it!

Is this your reality? 🫣 Catering has the power to easily 10x weekly store sales, but your existing tech may be creating nightmare-ish hurdles, and at what cost? We created a guide to show you how to hit the ground running with a fully integrated catering solution: https://lnkd.in/dkiN3ZYX

Check please!!!  While I now have some fun pictures of my family waiting for the check over the years, I would much rather have been able to “get up and go”, at least to have the option to leave when we were ready. I’m still thinking about that Pete Wells article read ‘round the industry. Many in restaurant tech have responded with thoughtful rebuttals. Kristen Hawley delivered a fantastic round-up of industry perspectives in a recent edition of Expedite. As someone who dedicates most of my time to helping restaurant brands embrace digital transformation, I am compelled to share a few thoughts. At a foundational level, to quote Bobby Stuckey, ‘Service is what you do for someone; hospitality is how you make them feel.’ That magical feeling hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, the opportunities and mediums to deliver that feeling have expanded. One such medium is Pay at Table. Wells eulogizes the traditional step of waiting for the bill. But what is more precious than the gift of time? Jennifer Panama and I have three young kids. Every minute is precious; every second saved from stress is like a gold mine. Wells estimates that he’s spent two months waiting for the bill. I can think of hundreds of ways I’d rather spend that time with my family. The same goes for kiosks. Shake Shack and Dave Harris empower employees to look up and see their guests, greet them with a smile, and provide a helping hand at the kiosk if needed. The same people-first culture and call to stand for something good Danny Meyer instilled in the original Shack staff are alive and thriving, enhanced by technology. I think that’s the differentiator– the best brands use technology not as a crutch but as a catalyst for their restaurant culture. Wells points out that guests emerged in a different form following the pandemic. This is true. Hospitality has evolved to meet guests where they are, no matter who they are. To know guests on this level and scale is only possible with technology. Because in this age, convenience and choice are mandates of hospitality. And personalizing the guest experience on an individual level is arguably the most advanced form of hospitality restaurant culture has ever had. 

When I was 12 (yep, just a kid!), I landed my first job as a busser at a local steakhouse. Part of my job was to attend to the salad bar wagon, no joke 😂. My best friend got me the gig, and while $4.25/hour paid in cash by the servers doesn’t seem like much, it was the start of something big. I quickly learned that hard work wasn’t just about making money—it was about making guests feel genuinely welcome. From refilling drinks to helping guests find their way, I discovered the power of a warm smile and a helping hand. Little did I know this would serve as the foundation of my hospitality career. When you go the extra mile to make guests feel genuinely taken care of, they remember, they return, and they reward you with their loyalty. And, when you hitch your wagon to brands that prioritize the guest experience, you’ll go far.

Have you ever read an article or visited a hyper-growth restaurant and wondered how they do it? In a recent webinar, leaders from Dave's Hot Chicken and bartaco shared how they scale their brands and drive profitable traffic. Watch the full webinar: https://lnkd.in/eExnnVyC 💡 Leon Davoyan, EMBA, Scott Lawton, Hillary Holmes