Flybuy and Olo Partner on Restaurant Off-Premises Orders Management

Radius Network’s Flybuy and Olo have launched new integrations to help restaurants manage off-premise orders.

The new integrations add features of Flybuy’s location-based customer experience platform to Olo’s open software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for restaurants to help them handle in-store, curbside and drive-thru handoffs, the companies said in a Thursday (March 2) press release.

“By ingesting Flybuy’s location intelligence, we can provide restaurants with the most timely information,” Dan Singer, senior vice president of corporate development and partnerships at Olo, said in the release. “We have a long-standing relationship with Flybuy and look forward to continuing to help our mutual customers by maximizing labor efficiency.”

PYMNTS research has found that customers are still interested in remote ordering of restaurant meals, even after lifting pandemic-related safety measures.

Nearly half of restaurant customers opt for off-premises dining, and 80% of those who do so choose to pick their meals up rather than having them delivered, according to “Connected Dining: Rising Costs Push Consumers Toward Pickup.”

The report also found that cost is top of mind, with 58% of takeout customers saying they pick up restaurant meals to save on delivery fees.

With the new integrations of Flybuy features into the Olo platform, Flybuy Pickup will provide notifications about the customer’s estimated arrival time (ETA) and arrival within the Olo Expo platform so that restaurants can optimize their order prep and handoff of off-premise orders, according to the press release.

This combination also notifies restaurants when they should begin preparing an order based on the time the customer is expected to arrive and the amount of time it takes to prepare the order, the release said.

“These innovations help optimize staff operations and automate the kitchen process based on the true arrival times of customers,” Radius Networks Chief Strategy Officer Dan Estrada said in the release. “This results in better quality, freshness of food, reduced throwaways and happier customers.”

This announcement comes about two weeks after Olo said during its quarterly earnings call that it is looking to dramatically increase its reach and its efforts to touch all restaurant transactions by powering drive-thru and on-premise restaurant sales.

“Currently, nearly 100% of drive-thru and on-premise transactions are analog, and as Olo moves into both on- and off-premise as a focus, we have a great opportunity for Olo to unlock the path to digitize 100% of transactions,” Olo Founder and CEO Noah Glass said during the Feb. 22 call.