Olo

Olo commenced operations in 2005, when under 5% of the population had a smartphone, starting out as a way for consumers to place coffee pre-orders via text messages sent from mobile feature phones. The company showed very slow growth initially, taking six and a half years to hit one million users. It has since evolved, from its beginnings as a customer-oriented service, into a B2B SaaS platform providing online ordering software to multi-location restaurant brands.

Olo offers restaurant customers three solutions: 1) a white label platform that allows restaurants to launch their own branded digital ordering service, where incoming order flow is centralised regardless of its origin (mobile, website, kiosk etc; 2) “Rails”, a service which enables restaurants to list their menus on third-party sites (DoorDash, Allset, Uber Eats, etc) with orders placed on these sites integrated into the restaurant’s point-of-sale systems (POS); and 3) Dispatch, which enables restaurants to synchronize their orders with available delivery vendors, allowing them to focus on accepting orders while outsourcing delivery. Olo is also working with Google to allow customers to purchase food directly via online searches through Google search, Maps, and Google Assistant. As of December 2021, its Dispatch partnerships included Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats.

As of May 2021, Olo had partnerships with more than 400 restaurant brands, including Chili’s, Wingstop, Denny’s and The Cheesecake Factory, across 69,000 individual locations. The company claims it covers orders from more than 90% of the US population via multiple delivery providers. Its business model focuses on making money from both subscriptions as well as on transaction volume. Its white label ordering platform is based on a fee per month per store, with agreements lasting 36 to 60 months on average, while both Dispatch and Rails are based on transaction fees.

In Q1 2022, Olo acquired Omnivore Technologies, expanding its technology partner network to over 300 providers and broadening Olo’s platform capability. The company also introduced on-premise solutions through its white-label branded ordering experience Serve, which was adapted by fast-casual restaurant brand Nando’s as its exclusive dine-in ordering system. Moreover, Olo deployed its ordering module at convenience store chain Kwik Trip, which marked an emerging vertical for the company and expanded its total addressable location count by an estimated 55,000 locations. Olo also introduced Sync, a simplified listing management solution. The company grew the number of active locations to approximately 82,000 as of Q1 2022.

In Q1 2022, Olo recorded an 18% YoY revenue growth to USD 42.8 million, meeting Q4 2021 revenue expectations. The 19% growth in platform revenue to USD 41.1 million from USD 34.9 million in Q1 2021 contributed significantly to this revenue growth. The company recorded a net loss of USD 11.5 million in Q1 2022, a considerable reduction from the net loss of 26.5 million in Q1 2021. The diluted loss per share was USD 0.07 per share in Q1 2022, compared to USD 0.63 a year before. Olo expected revenues to increase to the range of USD 195 million–197 million and the non-GAAP operating income to increase to USD 7.6 million–9.2 million by the end of FY2022.

Olo made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021, raising USD 450 million from its IPO at a valuation of USD 3.6 billion.