Conversable and Olo partner to re-invent the working lunch on Messenger, Twitter, and Kik

Conversable and Olo have partnered to help restaurants offer food-ordering bots to office workers — and those of us who often say, “Let’s order in” — using chat and messaging applications. The offering aims to help brands reach people at work via popular communications platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Kik.

Conversable has made a splash in recent months by building bots for brands like Wingstop, Whole Foods, and Pizza Hut. Olo, meanwhile, is a longtime mobile ordering company. Together they can help restaurants offer live menus, manage item availability, and secure online payment without customers having to bounce between apps and sites.

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“We see customers spending more time in messaging apps,” said Marty Hahnfeld, Olo’s chief commercial officer, in a prepared statement. “The integration with Conversable manages to pull all of these gritty parts of a digital transaction into something that feels very natural to the customer.”

Most telling is that the Conversable and Olo integration will enable social ordering, whereby a group of people can decide who’s eating what and when. Slack’s Lunch Train button provides this feature, letting anyone easily start a lunch plan that coworkers can join by clicking a button.

But whereas Lunch Train is suited for groups of employees heading out for say, Tex-Mex or salads, the Conversable-Olo offering will help restaurants better serve those taking a working lunch.