The future of digital hospitality is sustainable
We hold ourselves accountable to managing the impacts that our business impose on our company, stakeholders, and planet. Our ongoing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy development will harness opportunities to enrich our social impacts and lessen our environmental impacts, while centering on strong corporate governance and ethics.
Learn more about our ESG work and aspirations.
As a company, we strive to evolve with purpose, to become a force multiplier for good across our ecosystem, and to ensure our customers and communities are the beneficiaries of the digital shift.
Noah Glass
Our Strategy
Carbon footprint
At Olo, we recognize the risks associated with a changing climate. We also acknowledge the impact our business has on the environment and take responsibility for our GHG emissions & energy usage. We engaged with Watershed, an enterprise climate platform, to conduct a carbon footprint analysis for us – we commit to doing this annually. Using the data Watershed gathered as a baseline, we are actively working to understand our carbon footprint, consult with key stakeholders, and set targets for emissions reductions. Our environmental programming will develop as part of our ESG strategy.
As a SaaS company, the majority of our operations fall within Scope 3: purchased goods & services, cloud usage, and employees are our biggest emissions drivers. With AWS as our main cloud service provider, we glean energy efficiency benefits from their work. Other partners, and providers comprise the bulk of our remaining energy consumption. And while our total emissions have increased over the past three years, it is relatively flat when measured on a per unit of revenue and per headcount basis, which means that as Olo has grown, we have kept our carbon emissions under control.
Scope 1: Direct release of greenhouse gasses from sources Olo owns or controls (i.e. Natural gas from HQ).
Scope 2: Emissions from the generation of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling that Olo purchases from companies (i.e. Electricity from HQ).
Scope 3: Upstream emissions of products and services Olo purchases, and downstream emissions when customers use/dispose of our products (i.e. Emissions from our partners, consultants, and suppliers).
Waste Reduction
We are exploring opportunities to lessen the environmental impact in our value chain by way of our platform. Managing both food waste and consumer packaging waste are critical in the restaurant industry and so we responded to California regulatory developments on single-use plasticware in 2021 by rolling out an ‘opt-out’ feature that our brands can choose to offer their guests. We look to expand this work in the coming years.
Environmental engagement is a topic that Oloites know well. Olo Green is our employee resource group (ERG) that convenes employees with a passion for sustainability and eye for ways to increase awareness and engagement at Olo. The group hosted a climate governance roundtable discussion with leaders in our industry and continues to invite guest speakers to discuss topics like environmental justice.
Olo Green has also developed a water bottle tag to track reusable bottle usage at the company, which has been circulated across our employee base. We will continue to support Olo Green in its endeavors and collaborate to grow Olo’s environmental programming.
Learn more about our ERGs
Olo joined the Pledge 1% movement and created Olo For Good, committing one percent of Olo’s time, product, and equity to Olo for Good initiatives to foster sustainable contributions to the communities in which we live, work, and serve by integrating social responsibility and impact into our business.
Olo for Good is leveraging our people, technology, and equity to support organizations that are aligned with our mission and values including those focused on:
• Advancing all aspects of racial, ethnic and gender diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Providing relief and support for the restaurant industry and its front-line workers
• Ending childhood hunger and increasing access to foodasylees
• Protecting natural resources and reducing waste and emissions
Time
Volunteerism and social responsibility are instilled in our employee base. Olo’s Volunteer Time Off (VTO) Policy encourages Oloites to contribute up to eight hours of their time per calendar year with eligible organizations of their choosing in their local communities. We also match employee donations up to $250 per employee per calendar year. Since 2021, Oloites have spent more than 300 hours volunteering and have donated to 76 different nonprofit organizations, amounting to more than $41,000 with our company matching.
Product
Olo welcomed Emma’s Torch as its first Olo for Good nonprofit customer. Emma’s Torch is a woman-founded restaurant which provides refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking with culinary training, English as an additional language classes, and interview preparation.
Olo is enabling Emma’s Torch’s digital ordering capabilities by waving our fees for our Ordering and Dispatch modules. We are actively working to partner with additional nonprofit organizations.
Equity
Since its founding in 2021, Olo for Good’s annual grant cycle has awarded $7 million to fifteen different non-profit organizations through its donor advised fund (DAF) partner, Tides Foundation. We regularly monitor the impact of our DAF recipients through written quarterly reports and in-person meetings. These were the organizations that received funding in 2022:
• American Forests
• Appalachian Trail Conservancy
• Emma’s Torch
• Giving Kitchen
• Heart of Dinner
• The LEE Initiative
• The Okra Project
• Partnership with Native Americans
• World Central Kitchen
Through our DAF, we also provide strategic grants that respond to social justice issues and natural disasters. Recent recipients of these strategic grants include Equality Texas, Equality Florida, and Razom Ukraine. Our philanthropic contributions reflect Olo’s broader engagement on social justice topics that are important to our employees, customers, and partners, such as our decision to sign onto the Human Rights Watch Statement Against Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation.
Taking care of Oloites
We adopt our policies, practices, and benefits that foster a motivated and satisfied workforce. This approach is rooted in our company values, which include “Our families come first”.
Olo Ties
In 2022, we launched a pilot for our company-wide mentorship program, Olo Ties. Employees were selected and paired as mentor and mentee. Over the past year we’ve conducted surveys and focus groups to capture feedback and progress to inform our Olo Ties expansion plans for 2023.
Compensation & Benefits
Olo provides our workforce with the energy and support they need to excel at their job. In addition to annual performance reviews and mid-year check-ins, we conduct annual calibrations to examine the standardization of team performance assessments and better monitor the advancement and mobility of underrepresented groups.
Our benefits include fully-paid premium healthcare coverage for employees and their families, paid parental leave, mental health benefits that includes access to professional counselors and mental health sessions, discounted ESPP program, company-wide holiday break, time off for volunteer activities, a company match for employee donations to eligible nonprofit organizations, flexible working environment to enable Oloites to do their best work, and more.
See our Careers page for more details.
Training
During onboarding, all new full-time employees complete live training that introduces them to DEI topics and Olo’s initiatives. We continue to invest in leadership development, mentorship programs, ethics training, skills development, and other on-job training for Oloites. Additionally, our latest Leading Inclusively series for managers creates a foundational understanding of DEI in two-stage virtual and live formats.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Olo is committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture that promotes growth and equity for underrepresented groups, and supports and celebrates diverse voices and perspectives. Our DEI Director monitors our DEI data monthly, we provide reports to our Board every quarter, and we update our DEI website on a semi-annual basis with the latest data.
Our goal: By the end of 2024, Olo targets to have 42% women and 18% underrepresented ethnicities* make up our team. And we look forward to continuing our efforts beyond 2024. We are also growing our efforts to focus on members of the LGBTQ+ community, people living with disabilities, and veterans.
Learn more about our DEI initiatives here.
*Underrepresented ethnicities includes employees who voluntarily self identified as Black / African American, Hispanic / Latinx, Two or More Races, Native American, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
Corporate Governance & Ethics
Our approach to Corporate Governance & Ethics is best summarized through a simple Olo refrain: “Use Good Judgment. Act with Integrity. Be Responsible.” Our employees are expected to adhere to these principles as outlined in our Code of Conduct and Ethics.
Our ESG Team and our Board’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, who receives quarterly ESG updates, formally oversees Olo’s ESG activities, programs, and public disclosures.
Learn more on our Investor Relations page.
Data Privacy and Security
Data Privacy and Information Security are foundational to our stakeholder relationships, business model, and reliability as a SaaS provider in the market. Our in-house Information Security team is responsible for review and oversight of Olo’s cybersecurity program. We maintain and comply with a security policy that outlines how Olo protects our systems from unauthorized access and safeguards end user data. Our policy also provides a framework for Olo to address and remedy security breaches. Further, Olo’s privacy policy discloses the end user personal information we collect and the limited ways we may use this data. We never sell any personal information collected through our services. Finally, Olo is fully compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), is certified against the ISO 27001 standards, and complies with all privacy laws applicable to us, including the Privacy Shield Principles, to which we annually certify our compliance.
Materiality Matrix
Our materiality matrix illustrates the environmental, social, and governance topics of highest influence on our business success and importance to our stakeholders. The material topics of highest priority are depicted in Tier 1, the uppermost band to the right.
