How Scooter's Coffee solved a delivery management emergency

The 950-unit drive-thru coffee chain had just launched third-party delivery in three locations ahead of a planned national rollout. It was a big deal: Omaha-based Scooter’s had never offered delivery in its nearly 30-year history. Some in the organization had needed some convincing to make the leap. And it was not off to a good start.

About 25% of Scooter’s DoorDash orders were not making it to the POS because of issues with its integration vendor, said Tyler Marpes, Scooter’s VP of technology operations, in an interview at the FSTEC conference last month. The problem was bad enough that Scooter’s franchisees were turning DoorDash off, which did not make DoorDash happy.

And with deadlines looming for a wider rollout, Marpes knew he had to act quickly.

He went to Scooter’s chief executives with a big ask. “I need you to trust me,” he said he told them. “We're gonna make a change here. We're gonna do something crazy. We're gonna onboard a new vendor. We're going to train 950 locations. We are gonna build new documentation. And we're gonna do it in a week.”

With the C-suite’s stamp of approval, Marpes got in touch with Olo, the online ordering company that also offers third-party delivery integration software. Olo sent a team to Omaha on a Tuesday in June, met with Scooter’s on Thursday, and began work on Friday. By the following Tuesday, the new integration system was up and running in three locations. After that, Scooter’s began expanding it rapidly and is now using Olo and DoorDash in about 700 stores, making it one of Olo's larger customers by location count.

The timeline was aggressive, to say the least. Olo COO Jo Lambert said she couldn’t remember a faster installation in her nearly six years with the company.

“We've had bigger rollouts, but more time,” she said. “But I can't even think of a faster rollout for a smaller concept, either.”

She credited the trust between the two sides and Olo’s ability to handle complexity and scale. She added that the project has changed how Olo thinks about how fast it can move.

“We've got the platform, but it's only useful once the brand's up and running and generating orders,” she said. The faster that happens, the faster the restaurant, and Olo, can grow.

So far, the new system has not dropped a single DoorDash order, Marpes said. It has also eliminated discrepancies between Scooter’s DoorDash menu and the POS, saving operators time and headaches.

The initial success encouraged Scooter’s to do more business with Olo. About three months later, it tapped the company to handle its mobile ordering as well.

Mobile is a key channel for Scooter’s, with nearly 50% of orders coming through its app. Third-party delivery, meanwhile, has been largely incremental — from 80% to 83%, Marpes said — and is helping Scooter’s acquire new customers.

That includes DoorDash drivers, who often become customers themselves. (Some franchisees even offer couriers a free small coffee when they pick up.)

And though delivery got off to a rocky start for Scooter’s, the recovery helped build trust with both franchisees and executives. That has allowed Marpes to start thinking about the next step for the Scooter’s digital business. It’s now exploring online ordering, for instance, which it doesn’t currently offer.

“It’s definitely changed the tenor in the room, because tech's hard,” Marpes said. “When you can prove that tech isn't the hardest, you facilitate that trust to be able to take crazy swings in the future.”