This article outlines:
How brands must safeguard their direct ordering channels
Why simplification is on the menu in 2026
The mission-critical necessity of personalization
For decades, restaurants lagged behind other industries in technology adoption. 2025 changed that. AI moved from buzzword to business-critical infrastructure powering everything from demand forecasting to personalized menu recommendations. Restaurants unlocked new revenue in high-value channels, such as catering, which is expected to grow by 6.2% annually, reaching over $140 billion by 2035.
As Olo turned 20 this year—two decades of powering digital ordering for the industry's leading brands—I've reflected on how far we've come and, more importantly, what’s ahead. We’re seeing three major arenas materialize in 2026: the fight for channel independence, the era of radical menu simplification, and the scaling of true hospitality through personalization.
Platform ownership becomes a mission-critical priority
The most urgent challenge facing restaurant brands right now is one that's disguised as an opportunity. While marketplaces may offer attractive benefits for moving direct ordering to a third party, brands must carefully evaluate the long-term implications of ceding control over their 1:1 guest relationships. It’s a shift in ownership that ultimately results in restaurants handing over the keys to their digital front doors.
This is a strategic play to co-opt the restaurant's direct channel with its guests, creating dependency while diverting more guests away from first-party channels to the marketplace. What appears to be a cost savings today becomes a relationship tax tomorrow, creating a wedge between restaurants and their most valuable asset: the guests.
We're already seeing this trend accelerate at the end of 2025, and it will reach a critical inflection point in 2026. Restaurant brands need to recognize the long-term cost of giving up channel control and double down on building direct relationships with their guests.
The year of strategic simplification
I'm calling 2026 the year of the great simplification. We're going to see smart restaurant brands get more rigorous about identifying not just top menu items but also the items that drive the highest guest lifetime value and those that convert first-time visitors into repeat guests. This means trimming the fat from tech stacks, doing more with less, and rethinking menu performance.
With built-in tools like Olo Guest and Menu Intelligence, brands can now link guest data directly back to menu performance within their online ordering platform. This empowers operators to make confident decisions about which items influence first-time guests to return or deter them, which drive the highest average order value (AOV), and which add operational complexity without delivering value. The result is more focused menus that are easier to execute consistently and drive higher profitability per item.
Kitchen operations get simpler, too. Instead of automatically accepting every order and scrambling to keep up, restaurants gain real-time visibility into capacity at different times of day—understanding when they can accept more orders, when they need to throttle back, and what that means for the guest. AI-powered tools like Capacity Management and OrderReady AI make this possible, helping brands optimize kitchen flow, reduce chaos, and deliver accurate timing to guests and couriers every time.
Learn how P.F. Chang’s increased order conversion with OrderReady AI
The brands that master this balance—fewer menu items executed flawlessly, smarter capacity management, and laser focus on the most profitable channels—will be the ones that maintain and grow their margins in 2026. Simplification is the path to sustainable profitability.
Guests demand to be known
The friction-free experience is table stakes now. What guests really want in 2026 is to be in a known state every time they interact with a brand. In fact, 61% of consumers are willing to spend more for personalized experiences. They want their complete order history—not just what they ordered, but exactly how they customized it, down to every modifier. They want one-tap reordering. They want recommendations that actually resonate with their preferences, not generic suggestions that could apply to anyone.
This shift in guest expectations is driving how we think about personalization and operational tools at Olo. Our personalization features like Smart Cross-Sells, "For You" categories, and Local Favorites use AI to deliver intelligent recommendations based on each guest's order history, location, daypart, and cart contents. In testing, Smart Cross-Sells drove 10% higher basket values compared to static recommendations—proof that true personalization drives real revenue.
See how Waffle House incread revenue and repeat guests with personalized order recommendations
Guests also crave less noise in their inboxes. With a Guest Data Platform connecting data across a brand's entire tech stack to create unified guest profiles, restaurants can now accurately identify guests, whether they order online or in-store, learn from their purchasing habits, and determine their guest lifetime value. California Fish Grill generated a 41% increase in known guests and $7 million in digital revenue, directly attributed to personalized marketing campaigns powered by this data.
The winning brands will be those that capture this data, make it actionable, and use it to make every interaction feel tailored and remembered—turning first-time visitors into loyal, high-value regulars.
Leaps towards Olo’s mission: Hospitality at Scale™
With competition intensifying and consumer spending under pressure, the greatest opportunity for differentiation in 2026 lies in something timeless: hospitality. But we need to reimagine what hospitality means at the scale that modern restaurant brands operate.
How do you make guests feel seen, remembered, and valued when you're serving thousands or millions of them? The answer is to embrace technology that scales the personal touch that used to exist only in small, intimate dining settings.
This is why the predictions I've outlined—owning direct guest relationships, simplifying operations, and personalizing every interaction—all work together. When you own the direct channel, you capture the data. When you simplify your menu and operations, you create capacity to deliver consistently. And when you use that data to personalize experiences, you achieve Hospitality at Scale™.
The stakes are higher than ever. When guests have limited dollars, time, and dining occasions, they'll choose brands that respect all three: restaurants that don't make them wait unnecessarily, that remember exactly how they like their order, and that speak directly to them without a marketplace middleman extracting value from the relationship.
The restaurants that master this trifecta—direct relationships, operational excellence, and personalized hospitality—will take market share from those that remain stuck in the era of anonymous, one-size-fits-all service.
This is our mission at Olo, and this is the playbook I believe will define the winners in 2026: going back to the basics of hospitality, but doing it with the power of modern technology to reach every guest, every time.
