Linked Eats and Olo Partner to Optimise Third-Party Delivery Margins

Linked Eats, a SaaS platform specialising in restaurant profitability, has been selected by Olo as a strategic partner for third-party delivery (3PD) optimisation. The partnership integrates Linked Eats’ AI-driven analytics with Olo’s enterprise ordering technology to address the increasing complexity of managing margins across external delivery channels.

The collaboration comes at a critical time for the hospitality sector, as third-party delivery now accounts for as much as 50% of total sales for some brands. While volume has increased, restaurant operators face significant headwinds, including high commission fees, fragmented reporting, and the operational risk of "downtime" across multiple storefronts.

Third-Party Reconciliation

A primary focus of the partnership is to solve the "reconciliation gap" between delivery platforms and internal point-of-sale (POS) systems. Fragmented data from various DSPs (Delivery Service Providers) often leads to accounting inaccuracies and lost revenue.

The Linked Eats platform provides real-time visibility and AI-powered control to mitigate these issues through several core modules:

Revenue Recapture: AI-driven tools to analyse disputes and recover lost funds from error-to-payout reports.

Account Reconciliation: Automated gap analysis to ensure alignment between 3PD payouts and Olo’s internal data.

Automated Uptime: Continuous monitoring of digital storefronts to prevent lost sales due to unannounced platform downtime.

AI-Driven Pricing and Optimisation

Beyond back-office accounting, the partnership enables marketing and finance leaders to pull more sophisticated levers for growth. By leveraging data from over 40,000 managed storefronts, Linked Eats provides "Smart Pricing" capabilities—AI-driven optimisation for delivery menus that can adjust based on real-time demand and platform-specific costs.

Additionally, the platform's Marketing AI offers intelligent campaign analysis. This allows Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to evaluate the ROI of promotions across various DSPs, ensuring that marketing spend is directed toward the most profitable channels rather than just the highest-volume ones.

Robbie Earl, Co-Founder of Linked Eats, emphasised that the goal is to provide restaurants with both the knowledge base and the technical tools required to navigate the 3PD channel. He noted that the platform is designed to serve both CFOs managing back-office complexity and CMOs looking for growth levers.

"Working with over 800 brands, we see the opportunity to manage profitability across every sales channel," said Nolan DeCoster, SVP of Partnerships and Business Development at Olo.

"Linked Eats gives restaurant brands visibility and control for third-party delivery, empowering restaurants to keep more of what they earn."

Market Outlook

For B2B stakeholders, the partnership reflects a broader trend toward the "industrialisation" of restaurant data. As delivery moves from a peripheral service to a core revenue driver, the manual processes of the past are being replaced by automated SaaS solutions.

The integration of Linked Eats into the Olo ecosystem suggests that "profitability management" is becoming a standard requirement for enterprise-level restaurant tech stacks. As margins in the QSR and casual dining sectors remain under pressure, the ability to recover even 1–2% of lost delivery revenue through automated reconciliation can have a significant impact on a brand's bottom-line performance.