Scooter's Coffee replaced its failing DoorDash integration vendor in a single week, retraining all 950 locations and rebuilding documentation — and the new system has not dropped a single order since.

The Omaha-based drive-thru coffee chain had launched third-party delivery for the first time in its nearly 30-year history, piloting DoorDash in three locations ahead of a national rollout. The pilot nearly derailed the whole program.

Roughly 25% of DoorDash orders were never reaching the POS because of problems with the integration vendor, Tyler Marpes, Scooter's VP of technology operations, said in an interview at the FSTEC conference last month. The failures were severe enough that franchisees started switching DoorDash off at their stores — a move that did not sit well with the delivery platform.

With deadlines for the wider rollout approaching, Marpes went to the C-suite with an aggressive ask. "I need you to trust me," 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."

How fast was the switchover?

The chain brought in Olo, the online ordering company that also sells third-party delivery integration software. Olo sent a team to Omaha on a Tuesday in June, met with Scooter's on Thursday and started work on Friday. By the following Tuesday, the new integration was live in the three pilot locations. Scooter's then expanded rapidly and now runs Olo and DoorDash in about 700 stores, making it one of Olo's larger customers by location count.

Olo COO Jo Lambert said she could not recall a faster installation in her nearly six years at 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."

Lambert credited the trust between the two companies and Olo's ability to handle complexity at scale, adding that the project has changed how Olo thinks about its own speed. "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 — grows.

Beyond eliminating dropped orders, the new system has removed discrepancies between the DoorDash menu and the POS, a recurring source of wasted labor and frustration for operators.

What came next?

The recovery unlocked more business for Olo. About three months later, Scooter's tapped the company to run its mobile ordering as well — a critical channel, since nearly 50% of the chain's orders come through its app.

Third-party delivery has proven largely incremental for Scooter's, lifting penetration from 80% to 83%, according to Marpes, and it is helping the chain acquire new customers. That includes DoorDash drivers themselves, some of whom become regulars; certain franchisees hand couriers a free small coffee at pickup.

The swift fix also repaired trust with both franchisees and executives, which matters for what comes next. Scooter's does not currently offer web-based online ordering, and Marpes is now exploring it.

"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."