Google partners with Olo for online food deliveries

Devin Southard
·Producer

If you’ve ordered food online from Sweetgreen or ShakeShack, you have Olo to thank. The mobile and online food ordering platform works with more than 300 restaurant brands, including Checkers, Applebee’s, and Chipotle. Now the company is teaming up with Google.

Olo’s restaurant partners can receive orders directly from Google maps, Google search, and Google Assistant. Olo CEO and founder Noah Glass told Yahoo Finance’s The Final Round, that the arrangement not only benefits customers, but restaurants as well.

“When a customer starts their search on Google, they want that customer to then place the order on Google and not get diverted off to a third party marketplace where the restaurant has to pay a 20 to 30 percent commission and doesn’t actually own that customer or get that data.”

BOSTON - MARCH 15: Jane Bergman, a delivery driver for Grubhub, leaves El Pelon in Boston on March 15, 2015. (Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
BOSTON - MARCH 15: Jane Bergman, a delivery driver for Grubhub, leaves El Pelon in Boston on March 15, 2015. (Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

According to a report from L.E.K. consulting, restaurant delivery sales are projected to outpace on-site sales revenue by 2023. This change in consumer behavior is pushing restaurants to look at more digital channels to reach customers.

Glass is not surprised at the direction that customers are moving for service. “It started with…grocery stores, then restaurants that prepared your food, then takeout restaurants, and now you don’t even have to go to the restaurant. The food just magically comes to you. It’s inevitable in this industry built on convenience,” Glass told Yahoo Finance.