The Rise of Food-on-Demand

From the first restaurants in 18th Century France to the mobile-enabled food-on-demand platforms of today, the food industry has evolved in many ways—namely convenience. Since Noah Glass founded Olo.com in 2005, he has been working to empower restaurant brands with more user-friendly online ordering systems. More than a decade later, Glass sees major shifts in the restaurant industry, from the rise of “off premise consumption” to shrinking dining rooms and more robust kitchens. The focus now for restaurant brands, he believes, is how best to maintain ownership of the consumer experience.

Noah Glass is the Founder and CEO of Olo—the leading digital ordering platform for restaurant brands in the country. Olo serves more than 25 million consumers through their partnership with over 150 restaurant brands and an additional 20,000 individual restaurants. Olo enables consumers to pay ahead and Skip the Line® at restaurants such as Five Guys Burgers and Fries, Chipotle, Baskin-Robbins, Jamba Juice, Noodles and Company, Sweetgreen, and Wingstop.

Glass previously worked in Johannesburg at Endeavor Global, an international nonprofit which promotes entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Glass also served as Chairman of the Self-Service Order Interface (SSOI), an open standard for the integration between self-service ordering systems and point of sale systems in the foodservice industry. He is a graduate of Yale University and has a BA in Political Science.