In 2017, three friends pooled $900 to pop up a table in a Los Angeles parking lot and called it Dave’s Hot Chicken. Its tight menu and cult following turned their parking-lot stand into one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the U.S. It opened its 500th restaurant in October 2026 and once opened eight locations in a single day.
Before Olo, Dave's Hot Chicken ran online payments through a generic legacy payment processor. However, its fraud protection wasn’t calibrated for the restaurant industry: turned on, it flagged too many real orders as fraud; turned off, it let fraudulent orders through, leading to chargebacks. Across hundreds of restaurants, those chargebacks piled up, clogging corporate IT’s help desk queue with support tickets.
When Dave's Hot Chicken moved online ordering to Olo in 2023, it brought payments onto the same platform with Olo Pay. Leadership saw payments as part of the guest experience and a core part of the commerce experience. They knew a higher authorization rate meant more legitimate orders would go through, and that digital wallets would simplify checkout, giving guests a smoother experience they’d want to return to. When they switched from a general-purpose processor to Olo Pay, the brand had one restaurant-focused partner handling every online transaction, with built-in fraud protection. Leadership had worked with Olo at previous brands and knew it supported a majority of the top 100 U.S. restaurant chains, so they trusted it to keep up with the brand’s growth.
.jpeg)
