Olo started in 2005 as a way to order coffee by text message, two years before the iPhone. Founder Noah Glass bet that people would order food from their phones long before most of them could. When phones caught up, Olo became the engine behind the apps and websites of large restaurant chains. It also routed delivery orders into restaurant kitchens. In March 2021, with dining rooms still half empty from the pandemic, Olo went public.

Before the Smartphone

Noah Glass founded the company in New York in 2005, first as Mobo Systems. Its first product took orders by text message. The bet was that restaurants would want to own their digital orders, under their own brand, instead of handing customers to a middleman. Olo sold software to chains and charged them for each order. It plugged into each restaurant's point-of-sale system, so online orders went straight to the kitchen.

Twenty-Five Dollars, Then Ten

Olo priced its IPO at $25 a share on March 16, 2021, and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange the next day as OLO. Orders slowed once diners went back to restaurants, and the stock fell well below its offer price. Olo added payments to grow. In September 2025 Thoma Bravo completed its purchase of Olo for $10.25 a share in cash, about $2.0 billion in equity value.

Cover: In the Café, Fernand Lungren. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a café (restaurant orders).