Since their respective launches in 2013 and 2014, DoorDash and Uber Eats have dominated the food delivery marketplace. It's hard to find data blending first-party (directly through the restaurant) and third-party (through a marketplace), but as customers tend to prefer the marketplace approach, where they have many different options to choose from, one can reasonably assume most food delivery for a given restaurant is happening on third-party apps. Additionally, the third contender in the race, Grubhub, since its acquisition by Wonder, has been pushing hard to gain share by running media around no fees, a common customer critique of third-party delivery. However, third-party delivery is very difficult for restaurants as they struggle to achieve profitability through these third parties. Consumers love it, but restaurants have to generally subsidize the cost of the delivery and the marketing fee to the app (could be as high as 30-40% of the gross total).

Given this profitability question around food delivery, in my viewpoint, there has always been a time limit on this service until prices started to rise. Customers, especially Gen-Z, indicate they want food delivery, but something needs to change in the model. Many startups are working to identify alternatives, but there are two major challenges: getting the restaurants and getting the drivers. To succeed in this new age, you will need a distinct advantage when it comes to one of those two areas.

Enter Olo. Olo was founded in 2005 in New Haven, CT, by Noah Glass as GoMobo, an app that allowed users to pre-order food via text message from coffee shops for pick-up. By 2010, it had rebranded to Olo (short for online ordering), and was instead focusing on the B2B angle of helping restaurants set up their own first-party online ordering. For instance, if you go to Shake Shack, Denny’s, or Wingstop’s website and order, that is all powered by Olo. After being public from 2021 to 2025, and recently being taken public by a PE firm, the company is clearly looking for new ways to drive revenue.

This week, Olo announced it was returning to its consumer-facing roots. It will be launching a consumer-facing app where customers can order from hundreds of restaurants. Unlike DoorDash, the app will be commission-free for restaurants and give the restaurants access to data, a notorious sticking point with DoorDash and others for restaurants today. In doing so, Olo has coined a term that is new, at least to me, “second-party”, marketplace.

A stark contrast to the walled gardens of existing third-party marketplaces. Right now, the app is only available to Olo clients, with plans to add non-Olo restaurants to the fold eventually. It will be interesting to see if that changes the commission-free policy, otherwise there will be limited benefit to non-Olo clients. In terms of user acquisition, the plan seems to focus on leveraging clients’ customers, which also could be a sticking point for existing customers. In some ways, they are giving up their audience and risking potential loss of customers if they decide to try other spots through the app. That risk, however, is very similar to the existing third-party apps.

Overall, I think this is a positive for the industry, but I am not sure that it will be at the scale needed. Olo, as a software, generally only makes sense for the large, enterprise restaurants. For the smaller restaurants, who are hurting the most from the economics of the existing apps, they most likely will have to pay a fee to be on Olo too. Regardless, I am excited to follow along and see how this develops. The industry needs more innovation in the space.

This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Carlos Ventura, the CEO of Feast & Fettle, about his experiences in retail. The full interview is about a 15 minutes read, so I wanted to share some of the most exciting takeaways from our conversation:

Stay tuned for more interviews coming in the next couple of weeks!

In mid-2024, American Express acquired Tock, a reservations and experience platform founded in 2014. This purchase was on top of Resy, which Amex acquired in 2019. The two platforms are very similar, albeit serving different types of enterprises, so it was a little duplicative. This summer, Amex is planning on folding Resy into Tock, meaning the 8,000 venues on Tock will now only be able to be booked via Resy. Resy will now have 25,000 venues on its platform, as it tries to compete with the existing leader, OpenTable, as well as DoorDash, which recently entered the space. The advantage for Amex, however, is that it is using these reservations as a native perk to its credit cards, which is the core business. Unlike other credit card restaurant partnerships, they cut out the intermediaries. It will be interesting to see the reaction on the restaurant side and if many restaurants churn. From a customer's POV, it seems like there will not be much of a difference.

As we transition into a world of AI commerce, one of the leaders has been Shopify, which is a software platform for businesses to create eCommerce websites on. Shopify has been very active on its own site with AI, as well as partnering with others to integrate its products into others’ AI commerce flows. Some of the other companies Shopify has partnered with are OpenAI/ChatGPT, Google, Claude, and others. However, in part to defend its technology and in part due to a lack of consumer trust in LLMs, Shopify announced all the transactions will take place OUTSIDE the LLMs. According to Shopify, AI-powered shopping orders jumped 15x since January 2025, but consumers till need that trust in the Shopify brand. At some point, it seems like the flow will be less clunky, and more integrated, but for now, it will kick out to Shopify. It is very smart for Shopify to keep itself so vital to the experience, but it also shows that consumer trust is not there yet.

Both Home Depot and Lowe’s announced earnings this week, which gives an interesting window into how the economy is doing holistically and the context around consumer spending. Overall, Home Depot saw revenue decline by almost 4% YoY, and Lowe’s saw revenue rise 11%, but that was buoyed by some acquisitions. Both companies also cited the weather events that happened last year as a reason customers spent more on home improvement. Interestingly, like we see in many other areas, a lot of the spending is driven by the wealthiest consumers, while all other consumers pull back. Finally, there have not been as much moving and sales in the market, which means fewer renovations, which means less spending at these types of retailers. Overall, it will be interesting to see what happens. Will home sales start to increase? Will the aging homes be more in need of repair? Regardless, there will be more activity in this space, which will be good and bad for retail.

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Anniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

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