Olo Launches Consumer App That Undercuts DoorDash and Uber Eats Fees

Olo, the restaurant software company acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2025, has launched a consumer delivery app that charges customers in-store menu prices and routes each order to whichever of 27 delivery services — including DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber — offers the cheapest fulfillment at that moment.

CEO and founder Noah Glass unveiled the app last month. It covers roughly 800 restaurant brands and saves customers between 15% and 30% on menu prices, according to the company, because third-party delivery apps typically mark those prices up.

Olo employs no drivers. When a delivery order arrives, the app checks driver availability and delivery cost across the 27 connected services, then picks the best option. "We're finding the best option at that moment," Glass told Business Insider.

What does this change for restaurant brands?

For two decades Olo has run ordering and payment infrastructure behind restaurants' own apps and websites — Glass compares the company to Shopify, which provides backend services to online sellers. Brands on the platform range from Panda Express to Five Guys.

The new app turns that backend layer into a consumer-facing destination. It aggregates multiple restaurant brands in one place, offers both delivery and pickup, and reuses an existing identity system: about 40 million customers have already created Olo accounts by ordering through individual restaurant channels.

"They've gone to Waffle House, and they've ordered and created an account," Glass said. "They can now go to any of the other brands that use Olo accounts as a login mechanism."

Scale is substantial. Olo processes roughly 3.5 million orders daily, most of them takeout.

Why price is the wedge

The launch lands in a market squeezed by rising food costs. Some diners are cutting back or confining themselves to meal deals at chains such as McDonald's. That pressure makes the elimination of menu markups a sharper pitch, Glass said.

Many customers "just look at the menu price and say, 'Wow, restaurants have gotten way more expensive all of a sudden,'" he said — a perception he attributes in part to delivery-app markups rather than the restaurants' own pricing.

Competition is consolidating at the same time. DoorDash has agreed to acquire grocery-focused Instacart in a deal that would extend its dominance in food delivery. Walmart now uses its own delivery workers to bring customers restaurant meals alongside weekly grocery orders.

A bet on AI agents placing orders

Olo is also building a protocol to accept orders placed by AI agents. Glass argues that Olo's price advantage will stand out to autonomous agents as they compare where to place an order on a customer's behalf.

Order volumes through AI agents remain low today. Glass nonetheless compares the potential to a step-change event: agent-driven demand could become "another COVID-like or maybe even larger wave" of orders.

For marketing leaders at restaurant brands, the practical question is whether an aggregator that guarantees in-store pricing and competing driver networks shifts delivery economics in their favor. Olo's answer is that spreading each order across 27 services and 800 brands does exactly that — without the company owning a single vehicle.