March 2 through March 4, 2026, the Arizona Biltmore becomes less a resort and more a pressure chamber. Olo Beyond4 is not showing up for vibes. It is landing in Phoenix while restaurant traffic is shrinking, pricing has nowhere left to hide, and discount culture has burned through its last match. This industry is not tired. It is done pretending the old math still works, a shift increasingly reflected in tech news across commerce and SaaS platforms.
What makes this one hit different is timing and ownership. Olo walks into Beyond4 as a private company, freshly taken off the public leash by Thoma Bravo. Noah Glass is no longer speaking in quarterly syllables. He is talking in systems, consequences, and second order effects. When Noah Glass says brands are discounting themselves into irrelevance, it is not a quote. It is a warning label, one that resonates beyond restaurants in today’s tech news cycle.
The room matters because the problems are now structural. Menu prices are up more than thirty percent since 2020. Traffic is down. Generations are splitting behavior like a fork in the road. Gen X and Boomers are pulling back. Younger guests still show up, but on their terms, on their phones, and without patience for generic offers. Olo sits at the intersection of all of it, moving billions in orders while quietly watching where margin actually dies.
Beyond4 has never been about software demos. It is about operational receipts. Christine Barone from Dutch Bros has been clear that technology does not create hospitality. Culture does. The tech just keeps it consistent when the volume gets loud. Matt Eisenacher from First Watch did not gamify the waitlist for fun. He did it because boredom turns into friction, and friction turns into churn. Eric Stepp from Bojangles reframed catering from a side hustle into a discipline, because seventy two billion dollars is not an afterthought, it is a business line most brands are mishandling, despite how frequently it appears in tech news headlines.
Payments show up as the quiet flex. Olo Pay is not about processing cards. It is about finally seeing the whole guest, not a digital ghost on one screen and an in store stranger on another. When data stops fragmenting, decision making stops guessing.
This is why Beyond4 matters now. The industry is recalibrating, not collapsing. The winners in 2026 will not shout louder. They will listen better, target cleaner, and operate tighter. Phoenix is where that conversation gets real, where peers compare scars instead of slogans, and where Olo reminds the room that growth is not found in bigger discounts, but in knowing exactly who is standing on the other side of the counter, a signal worth watching in tech news this year.
