Noah Glass, founder and CEO of Olo, used his ICR Conference 2026 stage time to explain how a private-equity partnership, a strategic acquisition, and a new loyalty product are converging to reshape restaurant technology. He walked through Olo’s roots, the Spendgo buy, and the launch of Olo Loyalty, all tied to a clear goal: make every guest feel like a regular. The conversation painted a picture of a company focused on product depth, tighter integrations, and measurable value for operators.
Noah’s origin story matters because it informs product choices. He worked in the trenches as a cashier, server, bartender, and delivery driver before building Olo in 2005, and his early focus on mobile ordering came before mainstream smartphone ubiquity. That frontline experience shows up in the company’s obsession with making ordering smooth for guests and less chaotic for kitchens. It’s a reminder that the best restaurant tech solves real service problems, not just shiny features.
Olo today is no hobby; it’s a commercial engine used by hundreds of restaurant brands and millions of transactions. The platform captures order and guest data across channels so brands can act on a single source of truth. With a broad partner network and an emphasis on integrations, Olo positions itself as the connective tissue between ordering, payments, fulfillment, and marketing. That scale is what lets the company push into new categories like loyalty without starting from scratch.
Going private with Thoma Bravo changed the tempo of decision-making, Glass said, by allowing a longer time horizon for product and M&A moves. Public markets demand quarterly optics and short-cycle narratives, while private ownership can tolerate multi-year investments that pay off in operations and customer ROI. That freedom matters when you want to do deeper integrations and stitch together different datasets for a compelling guest experience. It also gives Olo room to pursue bolt-on acquisitions that fill capability gaps quickly.
One of those gaps was loyalty, and Spendgo fit the bill. The Spendgo platform brings a restaurant-focused approach to rewards and guest engagement, and folding it into Olo created an obvious product pathway. Instead of forcing brands to bolt on third-party loyalty in clumsy ways, Olo can now offer a native option that leverages transaction data already flowing through the platform. The acquisition wasn’t about buying a logo; it was about acquiring capabilities, teammates, and patterns that accelerate product delivery.
Olo Loyalty aims to be more than points and discounts. By tapping into the order stream and guest profiles, it enables personalized offers tied to actual behavior across channels. That means a loyalty message can be contextually relevant whether someone orders on the app, on a third-party marketplace, or in the dining room. The payoff is higher repeat visits and clearer attribution for marketing spend, because offers can be measured against real order lift rather than vague engagement metrics.
For multiunit operators, these moves translate into fewer integrations to manage and better operational predictability. A single vendor that handles ordering, payments, and loyalty reduces friction at rollout and simplifies reporting. Operators get consolidated data that can inform labor planning, menu optimization, and promotion effectiveness. Those are the kinds of improvements that affect the bottom line and make tech investments easier to justify to busy executives.
The broader market is primed for consolidation and tighter ecosystems, and Olo’s strategy reflects that reality. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, the company is building deep, restaurant-first capabilities and connecting them through a reliable platform. That tradeoff—depth plus integration—appeals to brands that want consistent guest experiences and measurable outcomes. It also sets up Olo to compete on product coherence rather than just marketplace reach.
The ICR session didn’t dwell on hype; it focused on execution and practical next steps. Glass framed the Spendgo deal and the loyalty rollout as logical extensions of a platform built on guest data and operational workflows. If Olo can keep turning those building blocks into dependable features that operators actually use, the company will be delivering the tangible benefits it promised when it began: smoother operations, smarter marketing, and more guests who feel like regulars.
