To celebrate 19 years of innovation, Olo rolled out 19 future-focused product enhancements in Q2 2024 to help restaurant brands increase orders, streamline operations, and improve guest experiences.
Keep scrolling to learn about our biggest feature updates and check out our Summer Release page to view the full list of product enhancements.
Order with Google enhanced redirect
What it is: An Olo integration that enables guests using Google Search or Maps to easily find and order directly from your brand
How it works: When guests click the "Order Online" button in your Google Business Profile, they are redirected to your restaurant brand's website to complete their order.
Why it matters: This new integration replaces the embedded Google ordering experience, which allows guests to build a cart and order via a restaurant's Google listing. It will enable you to increase revenue, improve the guest experience, and collect more actionable, first-party guest data.
How restaurants benefit: Olo's enhanced redirect drives more direct orders by automatically sending Google the richest menu data, accurate quote times, estimated fees, and other guest-centric information. You control the ordering experience and open the door to new, incremental guests‚ without the burden of establishing and maintaining the integration. Most importantly, you own your guest data and can use it to better serve, recover, and market to guests.
How guests benefit: Guests can easily find restaurants in their area and enjoy the frictionless direct ordering experience they crave.
Marketing A/B testing for email campaigns
What it is: A new way to test, analyze, and optimize subject lines and body content for better email performance
How it works: You can create email tests to see which subject line or content has the best guest engagement. Olo's Marketing solution will automatically create randomized test groups from the applicable segment or list for each campaign, produce a comparison report, and push the majority of sends to the winning variation.
Why it matters: Resource-strapped marketing teams need an easy way to identify and replicate high-converting email content to drive orders, visit frequency, and long-term loyalty.
How restaurants benefit: Be more efficient and effective with your communication strategy by ensuring your marketing messages resonate with guests. You can then take those learnings and leverage what's working to grow your business.
How guests benefit: Guests receive restaurant marketing communications featuring content and offers they care about.
POS menu builder for brands using Toast
What it is: A time-saving service that enables brands on Toast POS to import menu items‚ rather than build each by hand
How it works: The POS menu builder can use the data already configured in your POS to build and map your initial menu, kickstarting your deployment.
Why it matters: Menu building can be time-consuming and delay other parts of the deployment process. What used to take brands weeks of manual work can now be done automatically in less than a day.
How restaurants benefit: New and existing Olo customers can launch menus quickly and painlessly. You can now spend time refining your menu and working on other deployment deliverables instead of data entry.
How guests benefit: The faster your menu is built, the sooner your guests can experience it.
Capacity management rules engine
What it is: Customizable rules to determine the lead time for orders
How it works: You can set business rules to supplement your existing capacity management settings. For example, do not allow orders over $1,000. Or, if the subtotal is greater than $500, add 20 minutes. These rules will help determine the lead time for orders.
Why it matters: Some existing methods for determining lead time are inflexible and consider a limited set of factors impacting when an order can be ready. Restaurant operations‚ especially at high-volume enterprise brands‚ are often more complex and require supplemental rules for staff to stay on top of orders.
How restaurants benefit: You can optimize operations, prevent your kitchen staff from becoming overwhelmed, and manage guest expectations about when their food will be ready.
How guests benefit: Guests receive fresh food, on time, every time.
Order recent items
What it is: A new way for guests to quickly reorder their favorite menu items
How it works: When a guest is logged in, four recently purchased menu items‚ displayed in order of frequency and accompanied by images and prices‚ appear above the fold for seamless reordering.
Why it matters: Convenience and personalization are paramount for digital-first guests. By putting their favorite menu items at the forefront of the ordering process, you can make guests feel known and enable them to fill their carts and check out quickly.
How restaurants benefit: You can improve the guest experience, increase basket size, and drive conversion by eliminating friction and personalizing the ordering process.
How guests benefit: Guests can quickly access and reorder their favorite menu items without combing through the menu.
Modifier images
What it is: Additional imagery to help guests visualize their order
How it works: Brands using Olo Serve can now assign images to modifiers‚ including sauces, drinks, and more‚ via the Menu Image Management (MIM) tool in the Olo dashboard so guests can visualize their order as they build their cart.
Why it matters: Many restaurant guests eat with their eyes. Appetizing modifier imagery can create a more appealing online menu and mirror the dine-in experience.
How restaurants benefit: Imagery can enhance your off-premise guest experience by boosting engagement, providing visual cues, and increasing basket size.
How guests benefit: Guests can see every aspect of their meal as they customize it and order with confidence.
Easier Catering+ order management
What it is: New tools to adjust and pay for catering orders
How it works: Restaurant operators can quickly access and edit catering orders, apply one-time discounts, and enable guests to use the Switchboard payment portal instead of reciting credit card information over the phone.
Why it matters: Considering the average catering ticket today is $350—10x the average mealtime ticket of $35—a seamless ordering and payment experience for catering guests is key to maximizing restaurant revenue.
How restaurants benefit: These new tools eliminate workarounds and streamline catering operations so you can increase guest satisfaction and drive repeat business.
How guests benefit: Catering guests can easily place large orders and pay without worrying about the security of their payment information.
Getting started
Visit our Summer Release page for a full list of product enhancements released in Q2 2024. Olo customers can reach out to their CSMs to learn more about these features and how to put them to good use.
Not using Olo yet? Contact our team to start a conversation.
