In 2023, Team Olo worked hard to enable hospitality at scale for our restaurant brand customers by releasing 40+ product enhancements across our three product suites: Order, Pay, and Engage.
Each feature solves common pain points experienced by restaurants today and sets our customers up for success in the future. Here are the top product enhancements we unveiled this year—and, most importantly, how restaurants and guests benefit.
Order
1. Catering+ with House Accounts
Pain Point: Lack of integration between other ordering and catering solutions creates friction in the guest experience and makes order management challenging
Solution: Enterprise-grade catering solution that integrates seamlessly with existing mealtime ordering platforms and all major POS systems
Benefits: Restaurant brands can capitalize on catering demand and generate more revenue via a robust ordering engine with simplified order management. Additionally, with House Accounts, brands can offer flexible payment options to repeat catering guests.
2. Pay at Table
Pain Point: Restaurant staff have to do multiple table touches, and guests endure a long wait time for the check after finishing their meal
Solution: Guests pay and tip digitally by scanning a QR code with their mobile device
Benefits: Guests can experience the traditional hospitality of ordering through a server—without the hassle of waiting on a check after eating. Frictionless guest experience = happy, repeat guests. Additionally, Pay at Table increases efficiency and guest data collection for the restaurant brand.
3. OrderReady AI
Pain Point: Inaccurate order ready-time predictions produced by manual input
Solution: Machine-learning-based capacity management solution that generates highly accurate ready-time predictions using current capacity and detailed check data in real-time
Benefits: Brands can satisfy guest and partner expectations around timing, maintain food quality, and optimize restaurant operations. Additionally, this feature eliminates the need for manual inputs, guesswork, and ongoing management. In turn, guests know exactly when to pick up their food so it’s fresh, and they’ll spend less time waiting, which increases satisfaction.
Pay
1. Automated Fraud Dispute
Pain Point: Given the time-consuming nature and traditionally low win rate for chargebacks, restaurant brands often leave disputes uncontested—resulting in lost revenue
Solution: Olo Pay's Automated Fraud Dispute feature automatically responds to certain unaddressed disputes using Olo’s internal ordering data
Benefits: This feature increases chargeback response and win rates while eliminating the need for any manual intervention by the restaurant brand. It enables the brand to keep more revenue and spend less on battling fraud.
2. Card-Present Payments via Kiosk
Pain Point: Labor challenges and complicated payment processes
Solution: A fully branded, self-service kiosk that enables restaurants to accept card-present payments through Olo Pay
Benefits: Card-present payments via kiosk help restaurants conquer labor challenges, boost on-premise ticket size, and begin processing 100% of orders through digital channels. Brands also enjoy simplified reconciliation, refunding, and voiding processes.
Engage
1. AI Creative Assistant
Pain Point: It’s difficult to create engaging restaurant marketing content at scale, especially as resource-strapped brands struggle to balance multiple priorities
Solution: A generative AI tool built right into the Email Design Editor
Benefits: Marketing AI Creative Assistant reduces the time it takes to go from idea to campaign execution. Using starter prompts, AI Creative Assistant enables marketers to quickly generate compelling copy within the Email Design Editor, which can easily be refined to match the brand’s voice.
2. Computed Properties
Pain Point: Restaurants want to better understand and serve guests but can’t effectively collect, analyze, or act on guest data
Solution: Computed Properties, a feature of Olo’s Guest Data Platform (GDP), are guest-level calculations kept up-to-date as guests interact with a restaurant brand, such as the number of orders in the last 30 days.
Benefits: With Computed Properties, brands can create robust guest segmentation, personalize marketing communications to maximize ROI, and pass valuable guest insights to other systems in their tech stack.
If you’re already an Olo customer, connect with your Customer Success Manager to find out how to implement these features. If you’re not using Olo yet, reach out to our team of restaurant experts.
