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Catering done right:
how Illegal Pete’s drove a 930% increase in tips
with Olo and Cartwheel
Online orderingDelivery managementAbout the company
Illegal Pete’s is a Colorado-based group of quick-service, fast-casual Mission-style burrito restaurants. The brand has been running in-house catering delivery since 2001, with its own drivers handling every catering order across its locations.
The challenge: a catering operation with no digital tip path
Last year, Illegal Pete’s set out to modernize its catering business. The deliveries themselves worked, but the system around them was manual. There was no online ordering portal for catering customers, which meant no standardized way to capture tips digitally, limited visibility into order flow, and no easy way to optimize delivery across a growing operation.
The tip gap was the clearest symptom. Only 6% of orders included a tip, not because customers didn’t want to tip, but because there was no frictionless way to do it. On the back end, splitting tips across non-salaried staff was a manual accounting task that ate time and contributed to turnover.
The solution: Olo for ordering, Cartwheel for delivery
Illegal Pete’s implemented Olo to power online ordering and Cartwheel to manage delivery. Together they brought the full catering operation online, with three Cartwheel capabilities doing the heavy lifting:
The combination is what made it work. An online portal without reliable delivery management creates a different set of problems, and delivery management without the online layer means tip capture stays broken. For a brand running all catering on in-house drivers, the two depend on each other.
We consider Cartwheel to be a critical piece in being able to put catering online through Olo. For us, one could not exist without the other as we have all in-house deliveries on our caterings.
Results: every revenue metric up within three months
The three months before vs. after switching tell the full story.
| Metric | 3 months before | 3 months after |
|---|---|---|
| Orders | 379 | 565 · +49% |
| Orders with tips | 24 (6%) | 482 (85%) |
| Average order value | $477.20 | $530.90 · +11% |
| Average delivery fee | $47.72 | $53.09 · +11% |
| Average tip | $5.51 | $56.80 · +930% |
*Average tip figure excludes cash tips.
The outcome: a tipping process that pays off on both sides
The headline is the 930% jump in average tips, but the operational win runs deeper. Cartwheel and Olo gave Illegal Pete’s a cashless tipping system that made splitting tips across all non-salaried employees easy. That saved the accounting team significant time and helped reduce employee turnover.
The clearest signal is the tip capture rate: from 6% of orders to 85%. Customers always wanted to tip; the mechanism simply wasn’t there. Putting ordering online created a frictionless path, and customers used it immediately. The 49% volume increase and 11% lift in both average order value and delivery fee show the impact extended well beyond tips: more orders, higher value per order, and a tipping system that works for customers and staff alike.
