Olo, the online ordering provider for more than 800 restaurant chains, is launching the Olo App, a consumer ordering app on which restaurants pay no commission. Restaurant Business reported on October 19, 2026 that the launch is set for Tuesday, and Olo’s product page already describes the app as live in beta for existing Olo customers.
What Olo says the app does
Olo’s page for the app says it lets guests discover, order, pay and track orders at their favorite restaurants. The company puts the cost of existing all-in-one apps at 15 to 30 percent commission on every order, plus promotional spend to rank near the top of a feed. Orders on the Olo App flow through the ordering API a restaurant already uses, so Olo says there is no new dashboard, hardware or staff process. Guest data arrives at the restaurant as it would on a direct order, which Olo says leaves the brand free to market to those guests itself.
Guests follow a brand with one tap, and followed brands sit at the top of the home screen. Other restaurants are listed by distance. Olo says placement is not for sale, and CEO Noah Glass told Restaurant Business that “It’s really a first principle of the Olo App that it’s not going to be algorithmic.”
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Where the money comes from
According to Restaurant Business, restaurants pay no commission, so they do not need to mark up menu prices to cover one. The diner pays a delivery fee on delivery orders plus a 5 percent network fee that goes to Olo, and can round up to the nearest dollar for a donation to No Kid Hungry. Glass said that in tests by Olo employees, orders on the Olo App were 15 to 30 percent cheaper than the same order on third-party delivery apps. That comparison comes from the company itself and has no outside audit behind it.
The 5 percent network fee is the figure operators should put beside their own commission statements. Third-party apps charge restaurants up to 30 percent per order, according to the same report. Olo’s model moves a smaller charge to the diner and removes the restaurant’s share.
What the trade coverage adds to Olo’s page
Three details come from Restaurant Business and are absent from Olo’s product page.
First, delivery still depends on the apps Olo is positioned against. Olo has no courier network, and its Dispatch product routes Olo App orders to third-party delivery workers. Glass said the delivery apps have agreed to keep acting as delivery providers for those orders. In our reading, that makes DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub suppliers of couriers to a competing demand channel, an arrangement that operators should ask Olo to document in writing, including what happens to delivery times when courier supply is tight.
Second, the launch is smaller than the customer base. The app starts with about 250 brands covering 20,000 locations. Olo hopes all 800-plus customers and 90,000 storefronts will join eventually, and it plans to begin adding non-Olo restaurants, including local ones, as early as the first quarter of next year. Olo’s own page says the app is initially open to existing customers only.
Third, version 1.0 covers ordering, pickup and delivery. Olo is working on letting restaurants embed their own loyalty programs and on an “Olo Cash” rewards currency usable at any restaurant in the app, according to the report. Neither has a date.
The demand problem
Restaurant Business quotes Anna Tauzin, fractional CMO of Naf Naf Grill, which will be on the app: “We’ve seen other versions of consumer marketplaces that compete with DoorDash, etc., and they haven’t worked.” She added: “The consumer’s mind is awfully hard to change.” Tens of millions of consumers already use DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub, and Olo is well known among operators but little known among diners.
Olo’s answer is its installed base of accounts. More than 40 million consumers have created an Olo account to order from an Olo restaurant, and they will receive emails with the line “Never heard of Olo? You’ve already used it.” Olo is also spending on PR, social media and influencer marketing, according to the report. Kyle Mark, CIO of Woworks, which franchises SaladWorks and Frutta Bowls, called joining “a no-brainer when it was brought to us” and said the commission-free orders arrive like any other Olo order.
Glass has described the model as second-party ordering. In an April interview with Food On Demand, he said: “Being a marketplace, to me, means you’re not sharing guest data and you’re charging commissions on the orders.” He pointed to Shopify’s Shop App as the model, where one account carries across many merchants. Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers VP of IT Sean Thompson, quoted by Restaurant Business in March, called the app “a nice little extra” and “another channel that guests can get to.”
What it means for operators
Multi-unit restaurant groups already on Olo carry the least risk. The app needs no new integration, and the cost is a listing on a channel that charges them nothing per order. The decision is how to handle the guest data they receive and whether to place the Olo App link beside their own app and website.
Groups on other ordering platforms, including hotel groups that run branded restaurants and on-property outlets, have to wait for the non-Olo opening Olo has penciled in for early 2027, and should ask what terms and which platform integrations apply. Operators running their own loyalty programs need Olo’s loyalty-embed timeline before they commit data or promotions to the network.
We covered the other major attempt to tie ordering, loyalty and reservations together when DoorDash introduced DashOS, and Toast’s IQ team labor tools show the same vendor pattern from the point-of-sale side. Operators weighing the Olo App can set the 5 percent network fee against their current commission rate by channel, check the order data fields they would receive, and ask for the delivery-partner terms before the first order.
Source: Olo, The Olo App
