When Peter Benevides joined Olo back in 2015, the provider of restaurant technology’s CFO office was vacant—as it would remain for the next 4 years, until he ultimately got the position thanks to a nod from the firm’s CEO and perhaps a sprinkling of magic dust from Olo board members and investors.
Of course, things may have gone very differently for Benevides, as they so frequently do for many senior finance hires who, like Benevides, join fast-growing firms while knowing full well that there are no guarantees when it comes to C-suite appointments.
Read MoreThus, when given the opportunity to have Benevides reflect on his career, we thought it perhaps appropriate on our part to query Olo’s finance leader regarding what he feels that he got right along the way—especially with regard to any attributes or actions that may have made a difference in the career trajectory that for him has led to Olo.
According to Benevides, his success comes down to not having been afraid to ask others for help—a trait that he was to find increasingly beneficial as the company’s 2021 IPO drew ever closer.
It was during these months and years of career investment, Benevides tells us, that he found his attention focused by a number of critical undertakings, including making the transition from supporting a regional accounting firm to being part of a Big Four accounting house.
Besides being able to benefit from the fact that publicly traded firms offer a larger menu of services, the transition put in motion a Big Four “reference check” that afforded Benevides the opportunity to contact clients of the different firms.
Such was the nature of a phone call that he placed to one of the Big Four references.
“What was meant to be a 20-minute reference call turned out to be an hour-and-a-half-long chat,” recalls Benevides, who tells us that the reference happened to be the recently retired CFO of a publicly traded company.
“Once I got off the phone, I said to our president and COO at the time, ‘Gee, it would be amazing to have this person as an advisor to the company as we prepare to go through this IPO process,’” reports Benevides, who adds that the former C-suite executive became one of Olo’s invaluable IPO prep advisors. –Jack Sweeney
Made Possible By
- Strategic Business Growth: Discusses strategies employed at Olo, including incentivizing higher volume for restaurants using their platform, which lowered the effective cost per order, emphasizing strategic moves to drive business growth.
- Early Career Trajectory: Transitioned from public accounting to various industries, including music startups and e-commerce, before settling in as a finance leader at Olo, underscoring a diverse career path.
- Olo’s Offerings: Describes Olo as an open SaaS platform for restaurants, detailing products like OloPay for digital transactions and Engage for customer engagement.
- Insights and Mentorship: Shares insights on strategic decision-making, pricing philosophy changes, emphasizing the importance of networking, seeking help, and ongoing personal development as a finance leader.
CFOTL: Tell us about Olo … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Benevides: Olo is an open SaaS platform for restaurants, enterprise software vertically focused on the restaurant industry. We provide a suite of solutions across three core product sectors: Order, Pay, and Engage.
Our Order suite is a collection of products that allow for digital ordering and digital delivery for both on-premise and off-premise occasions. If you were to go to, say, FiveGuys.com to place an order for pickup or delivery, what you would be presented with is an experience that is branded as Five Guys. It feels like Five Guys, but what’s happening in the background is that Olo software is facilitating or powering this digital ordering experience. We do this not just for e-commerce. We also have a suite of products that enable digital on-premise transactions, too. Things like kiosk operations and QR code ordering are functions that we can power today.
Read MoreWe also have a Payments suite, which includes purpose-built Payments products and Olo Pay, which allows for card-not-present transactions. Within the realm of digital transactions, these are the types of things that we’re able to facilitate today via Olo Pay. We’re building toward card-present as well.
Our Engage product suite is a collection of tools that allows restaurant brands to collect, analyze, and act upon guest data. At its core, it’s a data platform, but on top of it is a suite of applications to reengage with the guests. If you think about it, you realize that the full loop of ordering, collecting data, and then reengaging with your guest can be facilitated by the Olo platform.
Today, our platform is used in about 77,000 restaurant locations around the globe, spread across around 600 restaurant brands. For the most part, we work with large, multi-location, enterprise names—think Chili’s and Applebee’s and Five Guys and Shake Shack and so on. This has been an incredible journey in the massive restaurant industry, but we can still see a long trajectory of growth ahead. Internally, we always say that we have miles to go before we sleep, so we’ll keep going.
jb
“Focus early on building the right team, processes, and systems, so that you can more effectively help both the business and function to scale. Ideally, you’re spending sufficient time in leading and developing the team, addressing tactical to-dos, and driving strategy. If any of these are out of balance, this is an indication that there is an area that needs attention.” –Peter Benevides, CFO, Olo
Olo | www.olo.com | New York, NY