Olo Taps AI to Improve Digital Ordering and Payment Experience

Second quarter earnings for restaurant technology platform Olo released Tuesday (Aug. 1) showcased strong company performance and a commitment to shaping the future of the restaurant industry through digital innovation.

According to the results, Olo generated $55.3 million in total revenue in Q2, a 21% increase year over year (YoY), with gross profit increasing 11% YoY to $34.5 million. About 77,000 active locations were registered on the platform at the end of the quarter.

On a call with analysts, CEO Noah Glass said Olo is at the early stages of a huge market opportunity as the restaurant industry moves towards 100% digital.

“We’re excited about our mission to be the engine of hospitality, helping our customers collect, analyze, and leverage the data they get from on- and off-premise digital orders, payments and engagements to create amazing experiences for their guests,” he said.

The open software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for restaurants offers clients services across its three product suites: Order, Pay, and Engage, enabling brands such as Cold Stone Creamery, California Pizza Kitchen and more recently Salad and Go to deliver a seamless and tailored digital ordering experience to customers.

To further optimize its services and help clients improve overall customer satisfaction, Olo has launched Order Ready AI, a machine learning-based solution that provides accurate quote times for when customer orders will be ready.

“By training and deploying models using historical order data and retaining the models on an ongoing basis, brands will have more accurate ready-time predictions instead of manual inputs,” Glass said of the product launched this month.

Olo has also rolled out in-store payments via fast-food kiosks, marking Olo Pay expansion into card-present payments. According to Glass, digital payment processing on-premise will simplify reconciliation, refunding, and voiding processes for restaurants, bringing together their in-premise and off-premise transactions in a single dashboard. Guests can also expect the same simplified experience Olo Pay offers in non-card present transactions, including the ability to pay with mobile wallets like Apple Pay.

In addition to these advancements, Olo’s Engage suite now leverages generative AI in its marketing product, using OpenAI-powered ChatGPT.

“The email template editor has an AI assistant on standby waiting to assist on title paragraph, lists, and button content blocks,” Glass noted. “This new AI assistance can be prompted multiple times to get the message just right before applying to a customer’s email template.”