The Big Greek Café, the Maryland-born fast-casual Greek concept founded in 2009, is overhauling its digital infrastructure by deploying Deliverect and Thanx across all U.S. locations — a move designed to unify first-party ordering, third-party aggregation, delivery dispatch, and guest loyalty on a single integrated stack.
The brand cited mounting operational friction — inconsistent menu management and platform reliability issues — as the catalyst for the technology overhaul. According to Niko Kontos, Chief Operating Officer of The Big Greek Café, the team was spending too much time troubleshooting menus and working around platform failures rather than focusing on hospitality. "Deliverect and Thanx give us a digital ordering platform we can rely on and a loyalty program that is part of the experience, so a first visit turns into a second and a third," he said.
How the Platform Works
The combined stack is built on Deliverect's Commerce API, which powers ordering on the brand's own mobile app and website. It handles operationally complex menu structures — nested modifiers, size-based pricing, dayparted menus, and channel-specific pricing for pickup versus delivery — and automatically adjusts prep times during high-volume periods rather than forcing locations to suspend ordering. Deliverect Dispatch routes delivery orders from the brand's own channels to couriers automatically, eliminating the need to negotiate market-by-market courier contracts or manage marketplace invoicing. On the aggregation side, a single menu update — a price change, a limited-time offer, or an out-of-stock item — propagates across every channel simultaneously, including third-party marketplaces, with orders flowing directly into the POS. Deliverect serves more than 85,000 restaurant locations worldwide, processes 30 million API calls daily, and has powered more than 1.5 billion orders to date across its API-first platform with over 1,000 certified integrations.
Thanx handles the guest-facing loyalty layer. Rather than requiring a separate sign-up, the platform embeds loyalty into checkout so guests are recognized from their first order and the brand accumulates real purchase history. Automated marketing campaigns draw on that data to convert first-time guests into regulars, and targeted rewards replace blanket discounts — a configuration designed to drive repeat frequency without eroding margin. "When loyalty is built into the ordering experience instead of bolted onto it, more guests join, more of them come back, and the brand doesn't have to buy that frequency with discounts," said Zach Goldstein, Founder and CEO of Thanx.
Operator Implications
For multi-unit fast-casual operators, the Big Greek Café deployment illustrates the growing industry shift toward consolidated digital commerce platforms — a trend well-documented in restaurant technology coverage — where loyalty, ordering, and fulfillment are treated as a single system rather than separate vendor relationships. The siloed approach, once standard across the sector, creates compounding operational drag as brands scale: menu inconsistencies multiply, loyalty data stays fragmented, and third-party marketplace costs grow harder to offset.
The partnership also underscores the strategic value of first-party ordering infrastructure. By routing delivery through Deliverect Dispatch on its own app and website, The Big Greek Café retains the guest relationship and purchase data that marketplace delivery typically captures for the platform, not the brand. That data feeds directly into Thanx's marketing automation, closing a loop that third-party-dependent brands often cannot close.
A full network roll-out across The Big Greek Café's U.S. locations is set to launch soon. For operators evaluating similar consolidations, the deployment offers a practical case study in how regional fast-casual brands can compete on digital experience without enterprise-level internal tech teams — a subject with growing relevance in beverage and foodservice industry analysis as consumer expectations for seamless digital ordering continue to rise across all hospitality segments.
This story was developed with reporting support from Food & Beverage Magazine.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
