Restaurant software as a service (SaaS) platform provider Olo is set to acquire customer intelligence and engagement company Wisely, which is hoping to enable brands to personalize the guest experience during restaurant dining and maximize the lifetime value of consumers.
Under the terms of the agreement, New York City-based Olo will acquire Wisely, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for approximately $187 million, made up of $77 million in cash and $110 million in Olo’s Class A common stock. The transaction is expected to close in 4Q 2021.
Olo is the developer of digital ordering and delivery programs for restaurants, allowing customers to place orders from multiple origination points, such as a brand’s website or app, third-party marketplaces, social media platforms, smart speakers, and digital home assistants. The acquisition will broaden the Olo platform to include Wisely’s suite of customer intelligence products, enabling restaurant brands to create their own technology stack from the resulting merger’s expanded suite of solutions.
“As we look to the future of digital entirety for restaurants, tools that help brands harness customer data and turn it into applicable insights will be essential for them to better serve guests and manage the restaurant enterprise as a whole,” said Noah Glass, Olo founder and CEO. Wisely’s customer engagement platform, operations intelligence, and data capabilities can complement Olo’s on-demand commerce platform to speed up digital transformation in restaurant brands, Glass added.
The Wisely portfolio, on the other hand, includes an all-in-one customer relationship management (CRM) solution with marketing automation functionality; Host, a table management, waitlist, and reservations solution; a guest sentiment tracker with aggregated and annotated guest reviews and feedback; and a customer data platform (CDP) purpose-built for restaurants to create profiles of individual diners, which the company says is the first of its kind in the restaurant business. “With our platform, restaurant brands are better able to personalize the guest experience—in the dining room, online, and through digital means—to ultimately improve customer lifetime value,” said Mike Vichich, CEO and co-founder of Wisely. “By joining with Olo, restaurant brands will have the ability to unify their transactions and their customers into a single, easy-to-use system,” Vichich noted.
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
