“The best days for the salad concepts are the Mondays in January. And the worst days are the Fridays and Saturdays in November and December. It's a complete inverse relationship. … People like to save healthy favorites because they think, I'm so good, I ate this salad and I'm going to eat this salad all the time. And they don't like to save these unhealthy, guilty-pleasure, late-night comfort foods, but they reorder them more often than they do the favorites.”
Summation with Auren Hoffman · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Auren Hoffman asked what Olo's restaurant ordering data shows about human behavior. Glass describes weekly and seasonal patterns: salads early in the week and in January, comfort food on Fridays and over the holidays. Customers also save healthy dishes as favorites, but keep reordering the indulgent ones.
Transcript
…kind of ethnic flavors and spices. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, certainly, we're into burgers and burritos and pizza. I like to think that people are like really good about their diet when they enter the week and they kind of crash out at the end. It's all about comfort food.
Because you think in January, people are really good in January. And then by like, you know, June, they're like, well, that's good. Yeah.
Yes. Like the best days for the salad concepts are like the Mondays in January. And the worst days are the Fridays and Saturdays in November and December. It's like a complete inverse relationship. The other thing is we learned this early in Olo's lifespan. And one of the things that we did was enabling a guest to save an order as a favorite. So they also have something called order history, which is obviously just like their transaction history. And we let them order from things that are in their transaction history. And separately, have favorites. And what we found is that people like to save healthy favorites because they think like, I'm so good. I ate this salad and I'm going to eat this salad all the time. And they don't like, they don't like to save these unhealthy kind of like guilty pleasure, late night comfort food, but they reorder them more often than they do the favorites. So people are funny in that way. And I do think that there's some, you know, learning you can do of the course of a week, what somebody who orders the salad on Monday might like perhaps as a healthier alternative as they're falling off the wagon later in the week. And we've played around, again, super early on in our history with the idea of could nutritionists…
I think you should check. You should allow to auth in your Whoop or your Apple health or whatever into Olo. And then it's like, hey, you know what? You deserve a milkshake. You had a big workout this morning. Normally, you know, but like, hey, this time, like treat yourself. Like, I would be like…
I think that that's all coming. I think that's in the future. And part of that, I do think is guests wanting to be known. I can imagine a future where guests are saying, I want to be known. I want to be even more known. And I do want some sort of real-time knowledge of what's happening with my body…
When we all have agents, which is coming, I mean, you and I, I'm sure have one, but maybe not everyone has one. We all have agents and the agents are, but my agent still doesn't like order my food and stuff. Like if I need some food for this, for my family or something like that on a Sunday night…
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