A new food ordering app called Olo launched October 20 with a simple pitch: pay the restaurant's actual menu price, skip the markups that competitors tack on, and cover the cost with a flat 5% fee instead. It is a direct challenge to giants like DoorDash and Uber Eats, which have long drawn complaints over inflated prices and shifting charges. But early side-by-side price tests suggest the promise of consistently cheaper takeout does not always hold up at checkout.
Olo describes itself as a takeout ordering platform offering both pickup and delivery, built around the idea of eliminating what it calls restaurant menu markups. According to Olo, the app launched with more than 250 national and regional restaurant brands, including Five Guys, Waffle House and Dave's Hot Chicken. The company says its broader technology already powers digital ordering for more than 800 restaurant brands across 90,000 locations, supporting over 100 million unique customers annually and more than 3.5 million orders a day.
The pricing model is straightforward on paper. Olo is commission-free for restaurants and charges customers a flat 5% network fee, plus a delivery fee when an order is delivered rather than picked up. That stands in contrast to third-party marketplaces, which typically charge restaurants commissions between 15% and 30% per order, per Hospitality Technology — costs that can push restaurants to raise menu prices to cover the fees.
What the New York Post Found Testing a Five Guys Order
The New York Post put Olo to the test with a Five Guys order of a cheeseburger, fries and a drink, comparing it against DoorDash. Olo charged $24.81 total, including a $1.09 network fee and $1.93 in tax, versus $40.87 for the identical order on DoorDash. But the Post also found that Olo offered no delivery availability for that particular order, meaning pickup was the only option, and noted that the app currently has fewer restaurant options than major delivery apps and lacks a dedicated restaurants page for browsing.
DoorDash, by comparison, has roughly 615,000 restaurant partnerships and more than seven million independent contractor delivery drivers known as Dashers, giving it a scale advantage Olo does not match. The Post's reporting also flagged broader transparency and convenience questions around Olo, including that the app gives certain user data to advertisers and that Olo's partners may use that data to market or sell services and deliver targeted advertisements, both per Olo's privacy policy — even as the company says, per its press release, that the app itself is free of sponsored ads and content.
A Four-Market Test Found Mixed Results
A separate four-market comparison by Food On Demand priced the same orders across Olo, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub without paid memberships or manually applied discounts. The outlet found that Olo offered the lowest food subtotal in every test, but the lowest final checkout total in only two of the four, according to Food On Demand.
In Minneapolis, Olo's total came to $19.62 before tip, beating Uber Eats at $22.92, Grubhub at $24.80 and DoorDash at $25.57. In New York City, Olo essentially tied Grubhub, at $65.15 versus $65.17, after Grubhub automatically waived fees for the order topping $50. But in Texas, a Five Guys order on Olo totaled $17.90 — higher than Uber Eats at $14.77 after automatic promotions, DoorDash at $15.94 and Grubhub at $16.68. And at a Sacramento California Pizza Kitchen, Olo's $7.74 delivery fee helped push its total to $30.13, while Uber Eats finished lower at $27.13 after automatic promotions, with DoorDash at $30.52 and Grubhub at $37.02.
Industry Voices Weigh Olo's Odds
Olo, based in New York City, has ambitions well beyond its launch lineup. The company plans to expand the app to more of its roughly 90,000 connected locations before eventually opening it to the restaurant industry as a whole, according to Restaurant Dive. Olo CEO Noah Glass has said he wants the app to scale to a billion orders a year by around 2030, the outlet reported.
Rich Pleeth, CEO and co-founder of Finmile, a company that provides what it calls operational superintelligence for logistics and complex physical operations, told the New York Post that comparing apps means looking at the same basket at the same address, including fees, offers and membership benefits. Pleeth said a lower price at a customer's favorite restaurant gives people a concrete reason to try Olo, but that restaurant selection and familiarity may matter more when someone is simply browsing for a different meal. He added that Olo may win occasional use without necessarily persuading customers to abandon the delivery apps they already rely on.
The pricing debate is unfolding against a wider conversation about fees in digital commerce. Groundwork Collaborative president and CEO Lindsay Owens testified at a Senate hearing in August 2026 on related concerns, and separate reporting has scrutinized a DoorDash patent, titled detecting user agitation application interaction, that was designed to measure signals like frustration, hunger, impatience or hurry — a patent DoorDash has since abandoned and which cannot now be used. Broader worries about dynamic pricing, which adjusts costs based on market conditions, and surveillance pricing, which can adjust costs or offers based on what a company knows about a customer, have also fueled skepticism toward the existing delivery-app landscape. An Olo-commissioned survey found that nearly three in four Americans, or 74%, anticipate delivery fees, while just one in four, or 27%, expect individual menu items to cost more on third-party apps — an expectations gap Olo is betting it can exploit.
Whether that bet pays off for everyday orders remains unsettled. Olo's own technology routes delivery through third-party providers via its Dispatch system rather than a courier network it operates itself, according to Restaurant Business Online, and as Wired put it, customers still have to pay a fee for delivery even with markups removed. For now, the early verdict from multiple outlets is the same: Olo can beat the competition on price, but not every time, and not for every order.
