I invented the text-message restaurant order in 2005. Twenty years later, I know what comes next

Noah Glass is the founder and CEO of Olo, a restaurant tech company that powers online ordering for more than 800 restaurants.

In 2005, two years before the iPhone came out, I was standing in a coffee line on my morning commute, watching everyone ahead of me go through the motions: order, wait, pay, wait some more. I thought there had to be a faster, better way to get my coffee. So I built one: the first text-message order for restaurants, years before smartphones made “ordering ahead” a category.

Over 20 years later, I’m the founder and CEO of Olo, the restaurant commerce platform behind 800-plus restaurant brands across 90,000-plus locations, including Shake Shack, Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, Five Guys, and Panda Express. I’ve spent two decades watching the restaurant industry innovate and iterate the ordering experience, and I’m confident now is the time for a completely new direction.

Here’s the problem restaurants and their guests have lived with since digital ordering went mainstream: they’ve only ever had two choices, and both come with a catch.

The first choice is third-party marketplaces, broadly known by consumers as delivery........

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